Tallulah 2012 | acrylic and oil on aluminium composite panel | 40.0 x 30.5cm
Ode on Tallulah, or on the Man-made

for Kirra
She frolics her face in a bowl of water,

upturns the bright container

on its emptiness, cosmogenically. 
She is precious with paw-thrush,

fearless in a barrel roll

which the whippet just steps over.

Her stub of snout is still too long for

Kennel Club standard, happily though it lets her

hurtle and not choke in clammy frills

of nose, a rose made out of bikie leather.
On the footbridge over the scrappy creek,

chicken-wire laid for human traction,

she trips over when a front claw catches.

There is nothing to be learnt or righted—

not while there are ducks to harangue from

a ten-foot height of Rapture.
When an eye near-popped out on holiday

it was put back in its setting by a vet-as-jeweller.

High-sorrowful Tallulah!
Her breed don’t do conception or birth

without a manned syringe of sperm

then scalpel. Yet none could deny her

spit-swept state of nature, a derrynge-do,

a raring-to, stirring ducks into placid elusion.