Spidermoon

By | 1 August 2015

The spidermoon burns
reddish-yellow yolky,
sleepwalking through nightfields,
a spinner’s tranced orb.
Trapezes drift on silk bolas.
Strands carry them a long way
to spokes, sticky spirals,
guyed trapdoors.
Wakefulness in shadows at dawn;
soft, quivering snuffle of a muzzle
nosing grass and bat urine:
the dog’s off the chain.

The bombora of Mount Chincogan
tips a green wave down to the yoga church,
and the amped-up ukulele player,
who busks for coins outside the IGA
with ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’.
The check-out chick pops her bubblegum.
Lorikeets squabble beyond the library.
A parrot-man coaxes:
his shoulders are perches.
A galah oohs and aahs.
He feeds the bird clinging to him.
The flock beats wings to a harbouring.

Summer kneads trees
the colour of a bloodnut hamadryad.
Sunflowers glow more yellow
than fluffy sponge-cake.
Cicadas swing like pendant earrings.
Grasshoppers like fallen clothes pegs, leap.
Brush turkeys stalk a picnic sandwich.
Tiny lizards pause, scuttle, pause.
A goanna hotfoots it
over the brickwork of the barbie.
The hot tin roofs
make with their creaking cha-cha.

The air’s dry as a dog biscuit.
Stones clang under dusty cars.
The burning tar sports a shiner.
A water dragon’s clean-bowled,
spread across the road.
The bat some kid shot at
hangs by claws from a wire.
Birds twitter, rayed out
against the phone transmitter.
The sun’s hard-boiled in its shell.
A spinnaker of cloud gets the wind up,
and bolts for the wild blue yonder.

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