I don't know much about the mechanical hawk

ravaging doves, though multiple rapes performed by

the machine we are witness to on a daily basis.
'We've both changed a bit,' you said on meeting –

Peter, I take small consolation from Orwell's remark that

'After forty, everyone gets the face they deserve.'
Thanks for the two small black & whites snapped

in minutes of each other thirty years ago – I made copies

for a book of never-to-be written memoirs.
You, me and Jeannie, the redoubtable Bill Dean,

captured back then in '73 on the porch at Noyna Road,

Sawyers Bay. That grand old weather-board that
I would soon enough leave behind, and a young

family forfeit to God knows what fate –

The two photos show us on a Sunday, mid-morning
maybe (judging by the light) after the night before

in fine camaraderie, starting in on the left over booze.

Framed there on the porch, flanked by wooden Doric
columns in a theatrical setting, the day's light filling

our hearts, tides of future disasters and departures for one

moment stilled – we are kinsmen on the ramparts
at Fort Apache – is there a wraith of smoke, an Autumn

fire in the middle distance? I am thankful for that

moment through you remembered. Tonight here in Sydney,
the moon is rounding out full, (a torch held by an

invisible hand) tracking the waves back across the Tasman

to pass over in sea mist, dissolve the telegraph poles
along the beach toward The Spit at Aramoana.

Peter, I guess some might say we are as pieces removed

from the chess board, out of the main game, set aside
as though to recall past battles and forays into other

peoples' lives – collectors of facts and figures, maintaining

our Book of Tithes, tally of worn down hurts and hungers.
Dispatches from behind the lines and times till Doomsday

rings through the heart's emptied chambers, that deep

belling sound as tectonic plates shift in the Southern Ocean.