Rain (August)

On the platform where the bitumen dips and pedestrian yellow prickles undulate little puddles widen as their source places expanding circles on the shiny surfaces.

On one side of the carriage the windows are crisscrossed with little sprays while on the other side the windows are speckled with droplets of light and grey, joining and flowing downwards under their combined weight and the speed of the train.

The concert ovations went all night when he emerged from his dreams of long coats and umbrellas anywhere in the world tonight to the warmth of the dark undeniable first world of his enduring habitation.

Overnight the roof sound was steady and this morning already the creek has risen to the grass, breaking banks and collecting more from the skies as it swirls brown toward inevitability.

Wipers in the blaze of white water push clear to serve clarity and every contour directs abundance across the camber and into Hoddle Street storm drains in sprays of hurry.

The slates of Collingwood turn black in the day and warehouse peaks and corrugations and solar panels of Richmond and terracotta tiles of Jolimont and tarmac tops of CBD glisten and whiten and flood.

Little streams down the tram grooves and against window settings and along the centres of leaves in canopy downward are cleaning up their act, the miles of gutters and downpipes, the birds will be happy.

Leaf (August)

 

The silver filigree veins of the brooch on the black lapel of the woollen coat of the woman standing at the red light remind him of satellite photographs of river deltas sparkling in the sun, but they he she they must walk.

The pamphlet for the pancake place handed out by chattery teens all play and watchfulness is scrunched up and scurrying away from the wind tunnel of the law-abiding street named after an obscurely Victorian empire builder.

The little flags that signalled summer and kept their nations alive above the fray are sludge in gutters, losing the forms that are the form of the tree today, the repetitions of those little flags barely a thought beneath the bark.

The portable cladding, layer over layer, seam against seam, rivet beside rivet, ascends each side of the skyscraper, light shifting the shading like a precious jewel, whether in cloud or bleak sunlight, except there seems to be a loose one.

Commuters on the viaduct turn the next page to find she has chosen a new life one she could only have now, while the judge two-dimensional in his one page summation found him guilty as charged, and other stories seen from both sides.

On unseen walls of a side-lane lot in the midst of the commercial towers the infomercial district of the city of closed-off vistas, the broadsheet posters of circus nightclubs and egomania rock bands wrinkle with the rains.

The spreading plane trees outside the casino are bare as their root systems down in the Birrarung earth, yet at the ends of a few east-end branches flutter the last of the big brown signs of life, about to blow into the river at the next insistent breeze.

Tyvek (Sze No. 5)

Sze No. 5

The brickline of fences in Cheltenham, medium and low, then ragged crumble where a vehicle crashed into a letterbox, and it is indeed cold Monday. That was a while ago but this is Monday. The networks of wires above the highway and their random lights are training the eye to rest on clouds of white and rose and lemon. Ragged objects in vacant fields could be papier-mâché. Junked computers on a corner, no one is reading this at the moment. Tickets after the show scurry for the carpark corners. The headache continues and the capsule packet is empty.

The body is carrying a painful argument that it wants to put off then wants to resolve and a little dream of Venice in this cold wind will help. The Venice of pink and white brick walls, sudden stone bridges over canals, motor launches of varnished splendour is in my mind. We could, we could find a little time to step across the white stones, their hand carvings centuries in the making.

But that is hardly going to last. It is the meteorites that we don’t notice in our argument. They are buried in the earth in big round grey shapes to a depth of miles and they hurtle elegantly above the evening clouds like wrapped-up parcels somewhere over near Jupiter. Advertising at railway stations behaves as though nothing will happen like a vast grey ball of stone five hundred miles across crashing into Highett or Hawksburn or does it really matter by that stage. Tyvek is so cute and water can pass right through it.