Sept 5
Space is dark and remote but sounds like the sea,
just two planets stand between me, then a ghost,
I make out a red fist and belt that points to them,
no doubt a useful guide to their true identity.
Do we need gods, now sin is common knowledge?
Does anyone live two lives to avoid one now?
We look one way or the other, to the past or future,
but do we have to choose? East or west?
Grey all day, apart from beginning and end,
colourless in the shallows, trees breathing
slowly, the forest restricted to abstraction,
a King Parrot calls from a Tallowwood.
And in the middle, in the middle of the driveway
a pair of Crested Pigeons wriggle, arms up,
washing in the drizzle, comic, awkward dinosaurs
and to think some people thought them extinct.
I have been digging a trench for the next flood,
separating stones from soil, rescuing worms
from the dark billionaire world of microbes,
the mattock slices past into greasy, pasty clay.
A jumping spider swivels on my arm, left
sits the Asian Garden with shiny Maple bones,
a camelia obsessed with endless florescence
and the rusty underside of Magnolia leaves.
To the right, the orange and lemon are snowed
in blossom so bright each must have a light source.
Our tiny orchard, with limes and mango is a blessing
though an avocado died and the macadamia is sulking.
Fiery dawn and sunset pull in one direction, a pale
limpid sky beneath a thick grey duvet, the other,
a composition never to be repeated, never until
our star fails, turns red and swallows us whole.
And here is proof that pigeons don’t rest in trees but underground.
