1
Back from a beer, we have a dance to
‘My Generation’, the sound through modern kit
reveals fantastic production for the times
and the sheer energy, bass and drums too.
I think Pete and Roger would take back the line
‘Yeah, I hope I die before I get old’.
Between songs I survey the garden, we play
with plants with good intentions. The rosella
has its first flower, the growing tips cut
a couple of years ago, it’s now a shrub
but seems happy. I go take a photograph
of Hibiscus heterophyllus, the Native Rosella
which started flowering last week, the flowers
are both athletic and fragile. We pruned
the growing shoots, emasculated it to a bush.
By the time I get back, they will be finished.
2
Lying in bed holding you tight, branches lightly gilded,
about to leave you, worried about the news from Glasgow
A Pied Butcherbird is singing its early song, a fluting melody,
the beautiful ignorance of song, he will change in an hour
to a doleful single note repeated – the world adjusts
but our lovescape seems constant beneath our burning star.
We enter the forest, our neighbour, our garden stretch
which contacts and calls upon our everyday. Every time
this particular space becomes a particular place – Jagun,
seeding the unpredictable and ephemeral every time.
