Walking home along New Canterbury Road

I pass under a eucalypt I can’t name – the rumour

of honey, the frayed brake lining of magpies –
and I think of our walk

around Manly Dam the first week of summer,

the day heating and finally loosing its energy

in a brief drizzle,
cooling the water dragons curious as we are,

as they retreat only the distance

we approach, and the shower
so short that after your father calls

your mobile, worried about Christmas plans

before you leave for Darwin,

and then puts on your mum,

the shower’s passed –
then there’s something we’ve already left behind,

we stop and turn back a few paces, sensing

we’ve missed – what? a hum

like a distant generator,

                                           or a narcissist’s sigh –
and two yards above us, a swelling

in an ironbark, inhaling and exhaling bees:
and knowing next to nothing about bees,

unsure if they’re natives

or feral imports, we watch –

                                                   some of them

burnished as museum medallions,

classic sheened bands of black and gold

pure as a home brand,
and others, their hive-sisters,

muffled stripes of dusky and tarnishing bronze

mixed with brown the colour of shit,
and, behind the honeycomb in the air

with summer dirt’s tang as it lifts, glowing

with the sun’s penumbra as it dips

behind the hill and trees –

                                                the after-image

that lasts, as we look away again,

is another thing gone from sight.
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