Ice (August)

Recently in a dream I looked behind to see Trump following me in a snowstorm. A round hole opened in the ice, into which he dropped without trace. This is not how I meet the Queen in dreams, reason to believe dreams are wish fulfillment. Last night I heard about school Geography. Next term is climate change. Because the melting ice in Greenland is not there to reflect the sun, the ground absorbs more heat, adding to temperature increases. Where will cities go when the sea rises? Are they asking, who photograph their ice-cream for their online friends, before absorbing?

Wattle (August)

August is cold Merri Creek, a black slow lucid surface of overhanging expanses, pockets of sky, irregular cloud. Those overhangs are gentle now, eucalypts clustering levels of leaves that pointedly accommodate the coming heat. Long trunks, that found a toe-hold on the grassy inclines, lean and lift with insistent authority, directly above slow coordinated water. Amidst this canopy of dull greens and fragile browns, foliage taking its turn, exists the all-out effortless circle of a golden wattle. Another writer would call it startling. Soft and resolute, it lends gold now to the water. Birds step in and out of it.

Once (August)

There is a suburb called Once. There the ball flew high in daphne streets. Lights quietened homes at night. There is a school called Once, where sums added up after crossings and marginals. There the teacher, Mrs Once, writes all over the blackboard. We copied her words in Once Exercise Books (Feint Ruled). There is a radio branded Once. The songs that weaved out were magical mysteries, the news was inaccessible politicians. Prime Minister Once was variously a shunter or a shover. A birthday party in August unwrapped the present called Once, purchased at the Once Department Store in town.

Mernda (August)

At Jolimont the name merges from the dark, above the driver’s compartment. It will become commonplace after this August, orange as Dandenong and Williamstown. It’s the furthest reaches of the system now. The automated lady on platform-speakers stretches the name beyond the limits of educated Australian: M-E-R-R-R-N-D-A. I wait for my Eltham. I notice that Mernda contains dream, start imagining all the dreams that went into Mernda, another village-become-suburb of outer Melbourne. Like Hawthorn once, and Ivanhoe. It takes Google to tell me it’s local Wurundjeri for ‘earth’, the earth covered today with more and more roads and rail lines.

Brute (August)

How different is the soft tap of the vote slip in the pop-up ballot box to the brute click of the columnist’s mobile in the intended’s ear. The August coup went absurdly wrong but the brute clique got their hit. The citizens feel both intimate and powerless, informed and remote, distant from the kangaroo forum. ‘Et tu, Brute?’, the second person singular intimate and final. Yesterday they slapped him on the back who now thrust the knife. Bloodless as a cartoon, the coup delivered a million Angry emojis on Caesar and the rest, all honourable men, and a few women.

Community (August)

August 21^st, Parents’ Poetry Morning at Fitzroy Community School. William Shakespeare: “All the world’s a stage” and “Lovers and madmen have such seething brains.” Shel Silverstein: ‘Sick’. Kelly Mayo’s ‘Bumblebee’. Ogden Nash: ‘Admonitory Lines for the Birthday of an Over-energetic Contemporary’. Tulip Kilbourne: ‘Spiders’. Louise Glück: ‘Autumn’. Irene and Aubrey de Selincourt: ‘I Like to Sit by the Fire and Stare’. Walt Whitman: ‘There was a Child went forth every Day’, ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ and ‘Miracles’. Pam Ayres: ‘Oh I wish I’d looked after me teeth!’ Oliver Hereford: ‘The Crocodile’. A.A. Milne: ‘Halfway Down’. Charlotte Mitchell: ‘Just in case’.

Scaffolding (August)

One sentence from this August’s revenger’s tragedy: “Turnbull’s death warrant has been signed and the scaffolding’s been built.” Jacobean drama masterminded the storytelling technique of showing rather than telling, but Peta Credlin does both. As Reporter she imparts bad news to the Skies, though she’s also Agent. Until then, the audience were unaware of trapdoor plots. But she cannot help herself. The moment is hers. Turnbull’s Nemesis acts the part of Messenger. Gibbets advertised in London streets; good Christians witnessed public executions in real time, as in their rituals. At the theatre, they waited expectantly when Will’s jape involved scaffolds.

Party (August)

Now that, this August, its balkanisation is in full view, fresh names are offered for Robert Menzies’ inappropriately named Liberal Party. The Off-Shore Party. The Murdoch Stooges. Jaded comrades suggest Capitalist Pig-Dog Party, but that won’t translate to the electorate. The Solution Party is torpedoed by jests about The Double Dissolution Party. The Disillusion Party. Tony Abbott Team has been ditched, but Shirtfront Party is punchy. Precedents include Chipp’s Democrats and One Nation, now PHON, suggestive of phoniness, all policy dictated from Pauline Hanson’s phone. The Selfish Party. The Policy-Free Party. The Millionaires Party. All options are on the table.

Fifteen (August)

You have fifteen minutes in which to reflect on your actions. Fifteen minutes in which to fill out the form. Fifteen minutes in which to enter the bunker. Fifteen minutes at two hundred degrees. Fifteen secrets of very successful entrepreneurs. Fifteen-letter words. Fifteen Eighty-Eight the Spanish Armada. Fifteen: Taylor Swift. Fifteen minutes of fame. You have fifteen minutes to calm down. Fifteen minutes in which to chill. Fifteen minutes to forget about all of that. Fifteen minutes of breathing exercises. Fifteen words to meditate with: Blue. Harmony. Bend. Laughter. Peace. Home. August. Wonder. Sometimes. Open. Sounds. Sunday. Another. Samaritan. Healing.