Some nights

Some nights fall:
The chickens are fed,
The kids are in bed,
The dishes are done,
But the words don’t come.
Nothing at all.
The shadowy hall
The clock on the wall.
Nights fall. And some
Are like this one
The words don’t come.

Kinglake Sonnet

In the fire scarred, mist softened hills we stop
for hot milk and meat pies, shelter from rain.
A man considers the rolls that remain,
reflective bands on the sleeves of his top.
His uniform draws the attention
of my two girls. “Fireman? Police?” they ask.
“Paramedic,” I say, as he walks past.
The girls regard him with apprehension.

He cradles a large sized bottle of coke.
“Somebody crashed in the rain,” says Fred.
Una says, “Somebody’s dying, or dead.”
But girls, he’s mostly a normal bloke
getting lunch and a drink like us, just the same,
and the rain is the rain. Just the rain. Just the rain.

Breastfeeding

You wake crying

in the early afternoon,

In a sunlit room

I lie down to feed you.

Your eyes gaze into mine,

Light enters and exits you,

And we are twice joined.

Wimmera by Sidney Nolan

I said to my love who is living
Dear we shall never be that verb
Perched on the sole Arabian tree
Ern Malley

a figure
the lost dark
reels from the open country
of himself

I was in Dimboola once
the landscape was not gone
though you took it with you
pressed between the pages of a book

the artist eliminates all traces
of looking
takes only himself
and not the frightened dust

At One

Hello? You okay?
You gone go inna car?
You gone go?
You okay?
yuh/yuh/yuh/
More? G'day. Hi. Yay.
Hey. Heeey.
Mumma. Dadda.
You okay? Okay?
Gone go?
Bye bye boowa.

Dreaming Sisters

each night
they sisters lie
side by side
on narrow beds

squabble fret
squirm protest
finally one
then the other
submits

two girls
breathing out
ink black clouds
pin-prick stars

private constellations

they wake at light
relieved
and irritated
to see each other
again

The manifestation of unnamed longing

Baby in the high chair

More? More? More?

We give him more

It ends up on the floor.