Y

[Y]

 

Yes is the start of possibilities new talking new walking a face

you look at again anew & faces anew words crossing forced borders

that change boundaries untick fences ways of being that do not have

not worked a long while put aside with yes memories generations

of how that way did not work that by asking for new ways

is yes saying Y of a seedling the Y of together possibilities

bless into being listen to the hundred you & me tongues change

death places into ‘deadly’ places meeting in a word start to replace

 

No is going to get you nowhere maybe you like going nowhere

a place where you don’t need to know anything much at all

as if you will learn something & find yourself agreeing with yes

no is not seeing the landscape in front of you not listening

not seeing others not hearing them just other names N of blank

N of fence from here to horizon dead no time to listen  

Y (May)

Why the divide? Where does it start, and how? Saul Steinberg sat at his draughtsman’s desk. Figures stand at the end of each tip, wondering did they take the road less travelled? YES rolls downhill like a principal’s speech, directly towards an unavoidable BUT. May starts with an mmmmmmm of anticipation, encounters an A of achievement, only to tail off with an unanswered why. Steinberg took an hour with best art paper drawing a Y, all bells and whistles. Asked why, he replied, boredom. His stick figure Y reaches out, in ecstasy, for help, another branch on the family tree.

Y (February)

Y is for yellow sunflowers, stalks straight and faces turned away from someone’s uneven leadlight windows. Also this February the crepe myrtles line a forgotten street with pink, more pink than the dumb old galaxies that no one can breathe in. Z is for zinnias, straight rows and diagonals: strange how colourful regimentation satisfies some people’s need for order. Someone too must enjoy this cactus with its weird spaceship flower. Annoying agapanthus have broken down into their essential elements, designed to spread their kind. While white grevilleas in a disorderly garden untie their compacts, a flow-on of everything we’re given.

Y (September)

Y is the river come down from Otways after a week’s rain on W-structures and E-structures lodged into hillsides, the remaining houses staring down gullies and out to sea at torrents. Y is the split in slopes of Paddy’s Path, gone under the Ocean Road into containment walls, ready to widen into watered W’s, collapse into layers of earthen E’s, the Road closed. Y is the loader bucket shifting soil and stone, while Workmen and Engineers move about, excavating hillsides that in December were on fire and September went under flood. Y is the silent street turnoff at Separation Creek.