What are the white, fluffy clouds
saying
as they watch over us?

It's Sunday morning, so I go
for a walk on the lockdown streets.
First, down the footpath,
crossing a driveway, where
a black cab waits at the McDonald's window,
blowing white smoke,
a masked face peering out.

Then onto the avenue,
where a glossy sign advertises a mansion
for sale, where potted flowers are hanging
over balustrades, and moss climbs on trunks.
The sun is out but mist brushes against me,
like wool. I look at a yellow-painted house.
There is a wide-screen TV on the nature-strip.

On to Petrie Square and light filters
delicately through a stained-glass mural
where in a sea of blue Virgin Mary is holding infant Jesus.
A rain-drenched copy of Harry Potter
and the Goblet of Fire lies abandoned on the grass.
And at the corner of Alexandra Gardens, a night-globe
blinks off; it is seven o'clock.

The moon in daylight is a pleasure,
even if sometimes I think it is like
aspirin in a glass. I stop
to read a sign beneath a tree: a
bicentennial time capsule to be opened in 2088.
There are several people of colour
in the park today, which makes it cheerful and warm.

Somebody has stuck a red blossom
in the hands of a bronze sculpture
embracing his lover. Elsewhere,
art is serving a long sentence
and visitors are banned.
And so, one has had her constitutional,
and one strolls back,

past Charcoal Grill,
with menus of rump for takeaway
and the music posters now wasted
and the golf shop on its last days.
Two more corners and I am home. There,
my heart is waiting in these pages
by the window at my desk.

I thought those poplars
were statues
in the moonlight.

Words that misunderstand the heart’s native language
The moon in daylight
An invitation that comes in the middle of the night
Loving with intelligence
A fireplace, tropical home
The sucking of a lung ventilator after the heart stops pumping
Into a candy-floss dawning sky columns of smoke billowing
The last chapter nobody reads because the plot is over
A sepia photograph faded beyond recognition
The honesty of the tide that returns all of its drowned
A single light at 3 A.M. on a second-storey room in an inky town
Hours spent at a tombstone
Savouring poetry as a hungry man eats
Wet socks
The rich rainforest, underneath which carcasses are boiling with weeping rocks
Reaching for the cookie-jar
The bait past which a fish swims
The only sound a vase ever makes striking the floor
An immaculate room with no windows or door
A granite blink
An empty chair in a family picture
A universe of falsehood
Unpacking in front of your kids a bag of tins from the centre for free food
A beautiful city that never gets dark
The brilliant stains of agony the sun shoots into the west as it slides off the sea
Wearing lipstick under a ski-mask
A shadow moving across a field without bending a blade of grass
A house, with one room permanently locked
   

I love walking through the woods
On a spring morning,
Alone, naked
Under a dress, exploring

The footpath
Straggles onward into
The mystery of the
Primeval forest

There's the smell of 
Damp leaves,
Of wombats, sleep,
Slow air, infinity

I can see
All the dark places where
The sun has not yet reached, where
A yellow flower is creeping from
Its bud, where ant-trails ride across soil,
Like hum-coloured taxis, and
Giant trunks covered in rich lichen finery

Farther along, I come to the widening track
Where gleams of dawn
Breaking through the stirring canopy
Are at quiet play, where
I stand scintillating in their splendour,
Where trees speak the tongue
Of bare skin on bedclothes

I sit down on a luxuriant heap of moss
In a gentle dell, with a brook
Running over pebbles,
Brown, sparkling sand

I watch a low-bending branch
Tease the current into cheery eddies;
I hear the babble whisper tales
From the thicket's heart

Somewhere, a bird prattles on
About last night's rain;
Closer, a spider is
Weaving a wedding veil

As my attention draws near and out
In the bosom of this primitive world
It seems possible to trust in life, and
Live simply on this earth