Shells

in memory of Andrew McNaughtan, 1953-2003

Over the harbour coves today

the air feels thinner.

On the sand near Castle Rock

I pick up a faded purple shell,

its outer ridges gnarled

as an old boxer’s knuckles,

the inner surface

smooth as a sigh.

I’d put a note on his door,

“Call me urgently”,

but the house already felt like a shell.

He had no children

but the children of Timor.

It hadn’t rained for weeks

then, at the funeral,

torrents burst.

It won’t feel the same

going down to the bay.

I rub my finger over the shell,

comforting as Andrew’s smile

even when our despair

was deep as the harbour.

Geography

How distant I am from your suffering.

Why, it would take a long plane ride

to get there

or for them to get here.

I mean you.

The tyranny of distance, someone called it.

Well, thank god for geography.

Nothing wrong with distance,

good fences,

even the door between us,

even the skin.

Iraqi moon over Sydney

like the face of a damaged child

this full moon

climbing through angophoras near the zoo

will also rise over Baghdad

good for Iraqi gunners

not for our side

we like to bomb in the dark

so the kids can’t see our faces

Circus family

Between heaven and hell

we walk a tight wire.

We leap into the air

hoping to land

on some safe and distant platform.

We poke chairs at tigers,

try getting bears to dance,

elephants to tiptoe,

dogs to stop barking,

monkeys to be wise.

We juggle weighty clubs,

breathe fire,

choking on kerosene,

balance on fragile pyramids of chairs

trusting their thin legs.

We spring, we vault, we soar at times,

rebounding off the frayed trampoline.

We gamely dive through hoops,

leap over a dozen barrels,

sometimes colliding with number twelve.

One day the animals escape their cages

leaving the ringmaster

and the clown

to slug it out.

First bite

My father retired almost deaf

after decades of fixing metal presses.

He took me to the factory one day as a kid.

He wasn’t ashamed of the work he did

to feed his family.

I was frightened by the violent clash of metal

but never let on.

He was in the metal workers union,

read their paper,

the Tele and the Mirror too

but had a healthy suspicion of the headlines.

He grew up in the dark terraces of East Sydney

and ran errands down Palmer Street

for women of the night as he called them.

He was a bastard, legally,

and my mother never let him forget it.

Ten years after the final mortgage payment,

the garage door wide open to the sun,

he drinks DA from a pony glass

he pinched from the Forest Inn,

puts on a silly smile and says

“Ah, that first bite!

Glass of amber fluid, son?”

Warm wind, a song, February 2003

I feel a warm wind blowing

And it feels like peace

And it feels like anger

Against too long injustice.

I feel a warm wind blowing

From wintry Berlin, Moscow and Paris

Blowing across deserts and forests

Across oceans and continents

Across borders and border posts.

I feel a warm wind blowing

And it’s the breath of millions

It’s the breath of people in every nation

It’s the breath of ordinary voices

Speaking out strong and confident

The breath of hope and the human spirit.

I feel a warm wind blowing

Growing in fury and strength

And it’s building to a heated hurricane

That will blow down the citadels of war.

January, Balmoral

summer solstice has come and gone
without a fuss

three kookaburras are making
raucous satirical comments
on the status quo in Mosman

I go down to the harbour
enter the barely ruffled water
sun spearing through clouds

and floating on my back
look toward the south

the sky turns black

a sudden shower