Three poems

Graphology Causality 72

If woken on a low-sun day

snakes here being deadlier

will fight their venom

 

to take control of the light

they feel unakin too. Such

myths of purity and sacrifice,

 

such residues of dragon slaying,

coats of arms and concentrations

of wealth, such mosaics in private

 

bathrooms in mansions along the river

where bush once stood. This

is the nature of colonial cities,

 

and when Xenophon stood on the coast

with the less-than-10,000 soldiers

from the march and warfare across

 

“Asia Minor”, his anabasis always

searched for the sea, for the routes

to “home”, to wealth and adoration.

 

So the white worm lays in Old World

earth as older lands are excoriated

of their snakes, and antivenom

 

is mixed with material gain

and each mansion’s security

system states the bounds of a lair,

 

Ken Russell showing on the big screen

with all the curiosity of a low-res

unrestored comedy of manners.

 

Beneath, the water table is drained

and caves crumble, roots dry out.

 

Consolations 43

White ibis unpicks lawn seams

on slope from road with mansions

down to river where trees fret

if they rise even slightly higher

than views from balconies. These

jitters of an infernal naturalism.

 

After so many hours of over-reading

the river of characters, different

notes strung along the same lines,

to discuss vertigo with the ibis

is an act of respect and gentleness.

There’s a steeper curve to the world

 

than its beak – decoder and ruler

of the astrolabe, stepping from rete

to tympan across the projection

and accusations of gatekeepers.

But I work during the day with a star-

pointer, and, over an undercast sky,

 

feel we have plenty to say to each other.

I am mostly in the ecliptic, spinning

from the street layout, from utilities

and waste facilities. Ibis know properties

of water beyond my navigations, hour

by hour, deriving each moment’s clarity.

 

Pale Blue Fragments

On the orange-brown gravel

fragments of an intense pale

    blue – all

    facing upwards

other than one splinter which shows

the yolked underwhite of eggshell

    interiority. But blue-

    wise, a paleness

so over-tuned under the grey branch

and “xanadu” leaf swatches that swayed

    violently during

    high winds

that it looks a fake – of colourants

in plastic – on which the modes

    of light absorption

    or reflection

might be modelled. Related

or antithetical to blue sky

    clouding over,

    the contrasts

intensify, and those small puzzle

pieces of two silvereye eggs

    speak sadness

    with brilliance,

countering explosions from Bindoon

Military Training Area which shake

    the district

    to its colours, its crux.