Sister Nora kneeling to place daisies at the foot of the fruit machine

Circling, the ice planets appear fixed in the viewfinder

Of the binoculars left out waiting on the window sill

for watching cockatoos and pelicans in the wetlands

even your petty soul is heritage listed.

The codswallopers ride up as far as the electric wire,

Talking at once about the routine desecrations

Canvas bag bulging with nail bombs and mustard gas

Stoking the incinerator in the yard at weekends with boxes

and apricot tree branches

Dirty green water is stagnant with dead cod bobbing,

You allowed your ambitions to be so casually disintegrated

by the Mekon aloft on his hovering saucer

and every carved out idea that sank in execution.
Squandered my chances, poured petrol on every bridge

Tree hermit in the cave at Griffith, collecting shavings of Lux soap

for the copper, a Tarax Polly Farmer footy game found at the op shop

You must recall the revolving carousel restaurant down near

the Albert Park basketball stadium, what happened to that?

The scribe in the laneway beneath Gog and Magog,

the Harlem Globetrotters when they came to play at Kooyong,

And even the bailiffs won’t come for these failing

monochrome memories

And the cars like lit cigars wind in procession up Willan’s Hill

Down the edge of Beauty Point road

where the laminex factory once was

dinosaur backed dark road past tanks and towers,

glimpses of Bolton Park’s glaring pearls of flyswatter lights

for night football, loudhailer wailing,

as a late rumbling goods train bangs out its long kettle drum.
Then unbelievable stillness and the thinnest splinters of rain.