Days flip verso a large bass floating, scored over the inlet breeze pianists compete for what’s left of cool. Notes are transfused eternal, the flamenco trio has a new language George Michael to a different beat. The sky draws sail boards in bluesy clefs the old blokes banter in sets, so familiar they change key … Continue reading Jazz Festival Inverloch, Labour Day Weekend

When death called uninvited I remembered buried outlaw long necks of beer as tubers under the deign of hydrangeas splashing irises beside the straggling hibiscus a fallen rainbow entreating rain the returning blue chequer a flap in the tree house cornflowers adrift (Margaret Olley 'Afternoon with corn flowers').

I There will always be better words waiting.  Hewn from the territory of loss, erupted from joy at love’s motive -  refusing entry – at calling down, straying from the paddock/ crunching as stubble, caught out, irresistible in the turning key’s summons wandering beyond polite conversation, holding down sheet music blowing past the snatch to … Continue reading Almost Shipwrecked on Byzantium

(There’s a mystery kid) in some family photos he’s all big eyes red cheeks and an oversized cardigan out of place snow in summer a hair strand on your mouth not irritating but there I think his name was Johnny he’s as Catholic as his knees with a rally in his pose earlier years my … Continue reading Free on the Orphan’s Tab

we spent the night in the main ridge car park you held on to the goldfish humming into the bowl for their comfort the goat unbundled on the back seat head on my lap listening to the chickens talk away an unfamiliar place the rescue rabbit standing up to the three cats muttering discontent our … Continue reading Love, in a Season of Fire

He sighed in the giant’s ear smithed a carapace intact came out of the cocoon his wings unpinned at Jerilderie he tasted stars holding his boots close against the cell door he could see only dark until they stretched him out and he became something else   'Walking Through Fences' p 36. Flying Island Books … Continue reading Did you hear they’ve hanged Ned Kelly

We send you our finest though our words come in hundreds of languages there is only one instrument used by all our peoples, we are killing ourselves over the different edges of colloquial dissent and versions of higher idioms from the same mouths, translate for us of how flower buds and babies reach for milk … Continue reading S.O.S

Summer holiday morning, our town an overfull éclair. Dogs on leave bark for home, and teenagers rev the engines of older family members. Visiting cats wander into other territories, the wattle birds, all rusty complaint, while the rooster has crowed its night long displacement. The heatwave hums along with coolers, the air as heavy as … Continue reading Now I’m Sixty Four

God I loved you, like the Antarctic ice shelf crashing into the Great South. Just the now of it, how that moment was beginning and ending with nothing either side. The risen full moon’s yellow eye can witness but never understand the seamless elapsing there. Our breath white smoke to cold air, we stayed beneath … Continue reading The Full Moon