Our garden, Marrickville, Enmore Park

Back East on the edge of a factory belt, we plant live-fast-die-young wattles

on clay soil that cracks the walls in summer. A yellow bloodwood

dominates the garden, the only tree in the street apart from

an avenue of baby blueberry ash replacing elderly melaleucas.

A community of giant turpentine and ironwood once thrived on this ridge

of Wianamatta Shale, the paperbarks below damping a tidal river.

People arrived, measured the fauna and flora and each temperamental

achievement of the hunt. They read six seasons, we are in the middle of

bana’murrai’yung when tiger quolls seek a mate and we haul down the doona.

We once prayed to our ancestors for guidance and protection

and now ask scientists how global warming will affect harbour homes

and standards of living. Knowing place is the heart of belonging.

The radio says, Divorce ratesare higher among born-again Christians than atheists.

You laugh. With luck we belong anywhere between earth and sky, if

we share attention. Happiness is naked in the flow, nurturing spontaneity,

nailing wu-wei. Wang Wei comes to mind, I think of digging out his poems,

instead come down the corridor towards you to rewrite a brief history of flesh,

each touch perfect, almost sufficient, but always saying goodbye.