M

 

[M]

 

Mal-born, mellow-bairn, male-burn

anyways the mouth pushes softly before

boom or bust, make or break B, do or

die, a staid name politely taking its turn.

Victoria dubs thee meal-bun, mail-bin,

Melba-urn, mall-bored, Marlboro-brown

most golden marvel, Olympic hoop town

to be, or not, a faraway name to lose or win.

 

Not so, Naarm. Name buried under breastbone

denied its breath, name in dirt, old hurt

ownership nasal resonant through cranium, chest

resurrected by committee, stayed, all for the best

that repetition rendered home in ever alert

centuries, redolent of mists and mellow tones.

M (May)

Monday is nothing to get upset about. Individuals appear quite dressed up for it, generally. The furniture can stay at home. There is no gain in writing Monday one hundred times on the blackboard, it won’t make it go away. Live with Monday as with a friend. Another M the calendar insists upon is May. May is written about extensively by authors of every condition. It stacks up. May is up there, a very great deal has been said, and could be said, is. This is true across literatures, though statistics are scant. Anecdotally, no question. Few complaints about May.

M (February)

M is for Moon, above the nectarine, blurred in February warmth, alone except for us. Childhood word, a permanent object, friend for life, unlike the long words experience expects: meteorology, maximisation, managerialism. Here today, gone tomorrow, while moon whitens our tile roofs, our tin gutters, our moody windows. Sitting in the garden round midnight, my mind’s maddening google day calms like a cooling breeze. N is for Nectarine, nonchalant where summer’s concerned. I really wondered would it ever do anything, watching it suffer in bygone heat. Now its leaves make peaceful tidal shapes and its well-watered branches rest all night.

M (September)

M is the mile or two between Skenes Creek – magnificent waves curving into beaches before green hills every moment – and Apollo Bay. Old milestones of another moment were souvenired for someone’s backyard monument. M is the mind, mulling alternative plans this September now no tourist buses and cars of schoolchildren multitudinously mill, business a trickle. M is the mile of Ocean Road at Wye River where Christmas fires left hillsides vulnerable to flood, landslides coming down everywhere, the Road splitting and edging into the sea. M is the mounds of uprooted ashen earth that have closed the Road, stopping everything.