Here’s something special … a postcard to Tooradin, in beautiful West Gippsland, Victoria.
Listen in and read the poems below:
FLIGHT
When the plane went over the edge of the known world
we flew among things without names whose uses
I did not recognize
part harpsichord part bear
a giant door handle with wings
a choreographer with a bow and arrow
a row of tunics that went on forever
a sword fight with only swords
a dragon’s tongue floating
Where are we? I asked
Home said a man in a carnival suit
The plane had turned into a circus and they said the clown was God and we’d flown into his place where
everything floated upside down
like he’d forgotten to pay the bill on gravity
and we flew blind and wonky out
over the edge of the world in our dark flying circus
because God had also forgotten to pay the utility bill
trapezers stumbled from their ropes in the aisle and
the jugglers lost control of their ducks and kiwis
and the whole of us were heading down
through a black zodiac into what I knew
would not be good
So I kept my eye on the child of the conductor because everyone had forgotten
there were children still
and the babies were too light
they flew out the windows like doves
and because they had wings of their own
they made it out alive
HORSES
In my footprint there are horses,
hundreds of them, from little Bimbo all the way to Alice Springs,
hooves ingrained by generations,
dirt and sand and seedy toe.
My cannon bones ache like buggery.
My laminitis red and sore.
But I am still out in the field hunting truffles,
digging around with my cloven toes, foraging
Pegasus and Pegleg. I am pirate and king.
The underbelly of my sole reaches,
unshod into your dirt,
for a pocket to piss in,
for shoes of steel and clenches.
For my clenches have risen.
My pasterns are sloped and weakened.
Canyons in the wall of my feet and my future.
Jupiter in soil,
lifting from the bitumen, from the rough arenas.
The flooded fields of childhood.
I will fly out of this mud once I find my feet of wings.
My arms are wolves.
FINCH TREE
I thought the birds were gone. For good.
Then a swarm of finches descended on the cotoneaster,
spread themselves like ornaments
on the spindly branches.
Fresh cargo melding into the wood
as tawny knots
beyond reach of the cat perched on the roof
of the house next door
as mesmerized as I
by how the birds have merged into leaves.
In the patches of sunlight, one hops from one branch to another
reminding that the tree is alive.
me and the neighbor’s black cat
watching
longing to be among finches
as they burst up into the morning
in a tear-shaped cloud
free themselves from the prison of our need to watch
as we wait
me and the cat without collar or name
in case they might return and remind us again
there is beauty still
or teach us in the meantime
there is beauty in the tree where they have been
in the leaves and knots where we could barely see them
even when they visited there to surprise us
then whoosh on the way to their lives
DUST SETTLES
when the dust settles, I’ll watch the shadows of
the branches wander along the cream wall and
wait for the birds to come home,
even the crows as they balance in the wind on the tops
of the leafless elm, swaying up there like small black flags,
yellow beak emblems sharp
against the blue, blue sky the swallows that swoop
the calico cat in the grass around the base of the lemon
adorned with its own yellow emblems,
plump as breasts waiting to fall or be plucked
from their leaves by the soft-footed tenants
who creep around in the covid night,
in the shadows of the shed where the rakes and shovels
stand in the corner, readying their postures for work,
in case the landlord gets men
to make noise in the morning and cut the palms down,
as the cats hide under the belly of the building and birds
become nothing but a memory of wings