Snapshots for 3rd October 2007

sun bright   slant
on river   lead    on
leaves   bronze & gold
stretched along the valley

runners   heavy breath
floats up    white
behind them
pale moon
fading on the arras
blue

I remember how it will
happen. Leaves will fade
and brown, the sky will
grow wider. Snow will
thicken in the mountains.

The news will speak of war,
famine, extinctions. Coasts
will tremble beneath storms
called rare, unusual, brutal.

Widows and mothers will
grieve; fathers will fold flags
on the sideboard. Children
will not understand, but

they will rage. Skies bared
by fallen leaves will close
again with fog and falling
snow. Winter will come.

There's no point in calling up the photo now: the image is registered. Birds
at the rim of our plastic birdbath up in the hottest regions of Australia.
The parched north. The ones in the photo sit in shadow, like Indonesian
shadow puppets, drinking, ever alert. Head down, beak wet, quick up. It is a
ragged waltz between them and their little heads as they bob their beaks in
and out of the bath. Many birds drink here in one day, often in groups of
one species: red-breasted wrens, Gouldian finches, electric blue crowned
honeyeaters and bright eyed bee-eaters, black crows and startlingly white
cockatoos, such big birds nearly unbalancing the bath. But the birdbath is
not for everyone: ibis saunter across the wild grass, eating their fill.

Two and a half thousand kilometres away, I thought of them all today, twelve
hours ago when I visited the university near the river. At the University of
Western Australia's exact replica of Shakespeare's Fortune Theatre, three
peahens walked and pecked, one startlingly white, albino to my untrained
eye. The professorial poet with me said, _It is spring and the peacock is
always spreading his tail in a vain attempt, like us, to get some
attention._ Vanity and display.  Universities have changed their curriculum
since my youth – there's scant philosophy now, more practicalities.

I walked away as he went about his business, and I passed a pond where a
weary duck dried herself between lecture theatres. In the water, as if to
shock me out of my cranium aviary, a brilliant yellow fish, as long as your
arm from wrist to elbow, swam by. The image registered: yellow, smooth and
sleek as a chrome-finned American car.

He stayed with me as I drove away, as I drove through the city I had just
returned to after months away, he stayed with me as I looked at my childhood
river swollen with winter rains, the leafy tall trees of the city's
riverside avenue, where suddenly he was joined by bright green and gold
twenty eights, parrots who peck at sandwiches or seeds, and nest and mate in
plane trees by the cathedral.

Cirque du Soleil had pitched their massive air-conditioned tents by the
banks of the river, but I hardly noticed as sunshine sparkled off our
birdbath. As I pulled into our suburban driveway, a willy wagtail flitted
and fanned his tail on the green grass, jazz dancer in a dinner suit.

When I was real little
My Dad would tuck me into bed.
"You get to sleep. You know Mr. Jackson is watching."
Mr Jackson was our chief of police
Scrawny and sixty.
And I imagined him leaning a ladder
Up against my window and shining
His flashlight in to check to see
If I was asleep. "Night," my Dad would say
And, as I remember it, pausing in
The dark hall way to light a cigarette Bogie style
And then his footsteps going away.
And then no more.
Later I remember going upstairs to bed
By myself. I put the light on
And read "Famous Monsters" a fan
Magazine for those who loved them all:
Frankenstein, Werewolf, Dracula.
And I believed I was right.
Dracula would kick all their asses.
But when I got the book from the library
I didn’t even make it to the village inn.
Too damn scared and even scared
With the book under my bed.

Yes, it was strange in the fifties.
Mr Frank Stefanik who worked in the mill
And lived behind us with his dog Oscar
Saw a flying saucer and it was in the papers.
A week late he fell off a crane. Dead.

At school I had a friend Steve
Who they called "Sputnik"
Since he was smart and as ugly as Bob Dylan at sixty
When he was seven. And you could listen
To the real sputnik beeping on his stepfather’s
Shortwave and we deserved Rod Serling

Yes, he was inevitable. We had all of that
Under Cheyenne Mountain. Waiting.

Steve would come to school
With a big black eye and tell everyone
How he got beat up by black shapes
But we knew it was his stepfather.

And twenty years later I met him
In a bar and he told me
How he was just driving across a bridge
After his divorce coming back
From visiting his kids and pulled over
And just jumped in the river but
Then changed his mind …
And he laughed and we talked
About "Famous Monsters". He still held out
For the Werewolf but there was
Something else and he did kill himself
Before the year was out.
And I'll always remember how we
Both leaned on the bar after he told his story.
Waiting for something worse to happen.

he took
a long hard
searching look
at his life
but either
his eyesight
was failing
or perhaps
the whole thing
did not exist
a figment
of someone's
imagination
or worse
of that cat's
which is rather
irritatingly so
pointedly worrying
his food bowl
for any signs
of crumbs
or leftovers

This green stretch of Templestowe
between the main road and the river
used to be all orchard country.

Now only Pettys' survives -
the rest is million-dollar houses
with pools on one-acre sites.

Pettys proudly keep on with trees
they call "antique apples";
their tasting days in March are famous.

Passing their side road in September,
surprise: we see their sign out:
Fri. and Sat.: organic produce.

But their gate sign signals No Dogs;
as we skirt their wetland and its birds,
our pup is told: You're not getting out.

Lines of bare trees (soon to blossom)
stretch to the river, the grass under them
grazed by ­ kangaroos! whole families.

"We're happy for them to keep the grass down."
says Mrs P. She buys in honey,
chocolate, vegetables, organic rice.

The sheds are of old weathered timber;
signs invite us to the orchard museum -
such old machines! wood and canvas,

for rolling apples along through gaps,
sorting them for size, and so into boxes.
The apples on sale are popular ones:

Jonathan, Golden.... Driving away, we bite
into our purchase: not since childhood
have apples tasted so sweet and good.

The pup has never tasted one before;
he thoughtfully masticates the core.
Organic kangaroos people my head.

looking up: blue sky,
    green leaves
        (dead tree),
    catcry, & a sparse wasp-troop
circling for invisible flowers -

autumn is changing from its dogsong
to a clear, killing melody.

harmonizing, a fat crow
shouts at the cold, a raven
shrunk down by anger -
he has driven the jays
away to thefts & the sparrows out,
even his fellow corvid commiserators,
to express his last days.

autumn's rainbow winter
chokes his voice, tatters his soot
scarf to a wild ripped fur. signals of exile
but this crow says no!    he'll be happy yet
                                  tangled.

the air stings to remind us,
hail pitters our windows so we might know
things still left to know:

    a yellow birdhouse
    in a small, wet oak

    grass humming its green
    under last night's frost

    the sun, brighter than
    ever, peeking out
    from a birdhouse -

a sunflower growls sleepy in my mirror-
lit eye, the roof feels nearer the head,
scents tear tears from me in a smile.

looking out: blue sky,
    red leaf
        (apples down),
    end-shine,
and a dog
singing for an acorn.