1.

Port Phillip rucks & tears in the wind
and where the creek joins the bay, the lace
is tattered marl. Wild gulls pick

the day undone. A line of bleach ruptures
the denim cloud. Homes are like shirts
tucked into pants worn high, their prose

concealed from the renovator’s delight.
In the fraying suburb salt claws at the eaves.
A possum drops into a chimney, scrapes

at the wall, thumps and thumps. Though
her will has a rhythm insufficient to survive,
when a rope’s let down, she climbs.

2.

Lives pass in days of thin tar,
poured in patches where Frankston meets
the fluids left behind. Nudged by a late

patrol, a pale body is saying no.
Young Street is slate rewritten with old
meals the gulls enjoy and the refuse of blood

& wine, the suburb’s flesh, the greasy joes.
The air is deep fried palm oil.
Vinegar & salt are the commuters’ tread, in odd

time with the lights. Only the click click
is even and the fixed eyes. Traffic slows
at Bunjil’s statue. There’s a mess of gulls.

3.

A soft yellow light traces the shore’s
length. The wind pushes southward along
the beach. A dog romps and a woman

dressed in rough wool casts a line.
Banksias are sculpted against the sky;
multiple prints emboss the shore recalling
absences – a palimpsest at the water’s edge.
A small cliff’s formed by tides and marks
the singular landscape of this one hour.

Spaces show the rhythm of bare feet.
Each indentation is dark with shadow
that defines it for the eye. The lemon light is blue.

4.

The wind has left its skin in the old gum –
its buckled clock melts on Dali’s page.
Impromptu, the gusts arrive in rough time

and follow a score this species will not
track. To their metre, seagulls group
and scatter. With scant pattern for the eye

they rise over Nepean Highway, and fall
past the scrub to the beach. In white and grey,
and the tucked orange legs, they are dye

that stains the air with wind’s shift and drill.
And time is each ragged interval of the day,
the bent hands, the flowing clock, the skin.

5.

Fine sand has settled in drifts. The long
afternoon smears the sky with petalled sun.
Walkers choose paths over sediment packed

tight, shells pressed into gravelled footing.
Strewer of a communion march, the day
empties its apron of blossom. The sand is thin

and brittle as a wafer. The skin is the tongue
to which it clings. The sacrament is celebrated slow
with gulls like restive children. As the light

deepens, the allegro of the scavenging eye
discovers – the tide that arrives with
the bounding sea, the soul-fetching night.

CONTENTS: MARCH 2012