f
pigeons swinging to gun the light, wings
ablaze, the bulky horizon thunderous
where thunder lies cognisant.
The Great Dividing Range runs this way
and I am on the leeside toward the
sea. The setting sun awakens our
ancestral demand for bonfires
big as cities, and a leisurely parade
of gulls passing overhead mistake
the darkening hours for seacliffs.

These coastal towns boast the best burgers,
the newest surf club while the RSL
bends to the heavy metal swell which
runs the raft of every sea-slap
every weekend. The short, broad streets
are abandoned early to the blue
phosphorescence of the TV and the evening
rustle of newspapers. Tomorrow,
of course, is uninhabited and fresh as a
childs drawing. Further on through
the minutes someone is hard at a hammer as
if wanting to be let in. A news
bulletin tells of avenues long as decades
in a steepled town where tanks gather,
ready to break through a hay barn
in Kosovo. (Remember the Revolutionary
Poet who broke through a crowd?)
No, this is only a rusted keel upended
in the quarter-acre back yard. Not
by some turbulence round Cape Horn but
the tedium of a bankrupt dream loose as a
cloud. The family seams have now sprung
apart and the kids school the public
bars. A day in the round for the father who
breaks through the top-shelf like a
picket-line. At the local cinema watch the
astronaut yawn, unaware the alien
prepares to storm the spaceport wordless as
a threat. Its dusk here, mist drowns
streetlights, the earth for a time puts aside
its hunger, and a delayed flight
fills in for the evening star of Autumn.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements are due to Writers Radio, 5UV Adelaide
and ABC, 2XX Canberra for broadcasting a number of these
poems.

Many of the poems in this book first appeared in the following
magazines:

Aabye/New Hope International (UK), The Antigonish Review
(Canada), Antipodes (USA), The Weekend Australian Review,
The Canberra Times, The Capilano Review (Canada), Cyphers
(Republic of Ireland), The Dalhousie Review (Canada),
Encore (Australia) The Fiddlehead (Canada), Hobo (Aus-
tralia), Imago (Australia), Iota (UK), JAAM (NZ), Jacket
(Australia), Landfall (NZ), Links (UK), the New Zealand
Listener, Meanjin (Australia), New Coin Poetry (South Af-
rica), OzLit, Poetry Ireland Review (Republic of Ireland),
Poetry NZ, Salient (NZ), SideWaLK (Australia), Southerly
(Australia