The very glossy dark leaves of camellias

mean ‘boredom’
the papery bougainvillea

mean ‘turning out better than expected’
and the yellow and white frangipani flowers

mean ‘get it while you can’.
Some things

are strange, but not interesting.
Some biscuits

not ‘Niece’, only ‘Nice’.
Tonight the surf club is a dojang and people have gathered together

in their glamorous martial arts suits, sparring courteously.
Our laundry and the Parthenon

are both still standing, no thanks to the golden mean.
The dream you had that your bins moved in the night?

It’s coming true. Hear the rolling wheels on the guilty footpath?
There was something before and after.

Possum sits in the driveway.
Possum runs up a tree, but I can still see possum.

Possum doesn’t act too worried.
The bird is like the tree, the bird is like the flower

the wallaby’s fur is the colour of shadowed bark.
Been a predator? Prey? Know that likeness

means you’ll go hungry
unlikeness means

you’ll feel the snap of jaws.
Be a metaphor

or feel your own flesh rip.
Where’s Pop? He’s down the back. Oh.

Digging onion weed out of the lawn with a butter knife.
Onion weed means something’s really given Pop the shits.

In the morning, back to normal.
I’m writing happy middlings.

Endings can be downers, easy ways out, or revelations
but I’d like endings

to be estuaries, full of nests.