1.  Melbourne, 1968
Except for thistle girl,

         we never questioned wiping up

                  the hidden pools
of urine from under

         someone else’s skirt.

                  Mother Eucalypt’s voice,
known as whip crack,

         pitched to scatter even

                  the suggestion of ants.
There was no use for the yard

         either. Outside the Morton Bay fig

                  tugged threads
from under doors. The four seasons―

         did what they were supposed

                  to do. I swear,
for the well-thumbed chapter of a year,

         we never left that room.

                  Inside the clock spoke
conferred with a no-way-back

         roundabout of hymns, confessions,

                  multiplication tables.
Thistle girl, clever by account

         of her ancestral belligerence,

                  keen to stand high-toe kilter,
described the yard through a porthole―

         like us, the yard existed as if

                  never knowing its purpose.


2. Melbourne, 1970
Seven years old, caught under

         the abstract glow of her grimace,

                  Sister Heath’s
bull-dog eyes appeared

         at the palm-end of her

                  air-curling finger―
if you walk your muddy soul

         in the gully, you’ll meet Death

                  like Mother Magnolia.
Sister’s neck muscles

         snapped into inimical position,

                  tight bundles twanging.
And even though a body

         would follow the black trail of her

                  into the dormitory,
her cold breath huffing

         new lists of punishments,

                  my mind was back in the gully,
inside a vacant bower―there, looking up,

         seldom a presence in the light,

                  pollen’s blanket floating.
Sitting in low-limbed shadows

         with moths, the conversation

                  of leafhoppers, away from Sister’s
God, the one with his own troubles,

         away from all

                  the bleeding bones.