Isolation

 [Isolation]

 never before

black cockatoos in our tree

yellow-tailed black cockatoos

 

thinks by the time

I get the camera

they’ll have flown away

 

three of them

the usual racket

I almost fell over

 

Cloudland 13^th of May 2020

Copious Notes: Found this short haiku-like poem today in a file. History tells us that Victoria’s initial state of emergency notice on 16^th March 2020 was extended on 12^th April and again on 11^th of May, constituting the First Lockdown. Cloudland is a name we sometimes use at home for Macleod, the secluded suburb where we reside in the NE of Melbourne. The image is a recent illumination of street badging in the Richmond area, a large suburb in the inner east of Melbourne.   

Isolation

 All day I draw [isolation]. It’s the blank square I surround with pastels. Malevich has nothing to do with it. He left long ago. Delivery is a Goya, but for his mask and earpiece. I could make still-lifes of the groceries in his box. Isolation has Streeton consolations. Cherry blossom, for example, is not going anywhere, for now. The girls watch their afternoon movie. Hopper, Renoir, one of those. Meanwhile the cat walks Pollocks all over the property. Then sleeps in a Giotto-perfect circle. In our Rembrandt nights, wine’s the one daub of red pouring from the bottle. Kusama dreams.