after Adrienne Rich’s ‘Song’



with waves in it

the voice

sounds softly

caged
now we are in the apartment

twenty two

hours of each day

i am noticing the drip of white paint

like a long unfinished cry

on the window pane

instead of the view
wind inverts

the moreton bay figs

so the matte olive underbelly

replaces high gloss

and the whole tree points

southward,

is a cone
two hours of summer

on the princes park loop

scrapes underfoot

kicks up

in our eyes
two hours of

winter, clay

we come along

quiet

later

muddy
all the times

mum was a batshit sculptor 
for example

the morning

a sharp loud crack rang

through the lounge room

and pressed into

every corner

of the house

a split appeared in the picture window

running from top left

to the centre

like a lightening bolt

a builder said

the whole

left side of the house

had shifted a

fraction

down the hill

on account of

poor drainage

water seeping through

the foundations

mum superglued

flat glass marbles

the fish tank kind

along the crack

making

an ornament

of waiting

i stopped

bringing friends to the house

so i would not have to explain      her craft
first we will get a new bookshelf

and sell the current bookshelf

the table, another foot to the wall

brings new satisfaction

avoiding wood

for the fire
yesterday

the plane over the roof

carved its way

from the left jamb to the right

first in memory

yes, i’m lonely 
the voyagers have left the heliosphere

i read that they experienced a chill

and a new density of plasma

‘interstellar space is here’

they beamed back faintly to a 70 metre dish

the solar wind is not fading

as some thought

says voyager 1

it is up against a boundary

unimaginably massive

but, says voyager 2

the boundary is sharp, thin, sudden and

impossibly spherical
they keep moving

away from us

and each other

their arc and

fall

into the silence of space

will be longer than the earth can quake
old windows

are thickest at the bottom

and sometimes warp their frames

i imagine it

still a timeless liquid

drop by

look in

be still      the curtain
a small plastic bag

which carried oranges, nuts, lettuce

or perhaps some lollies

for about half an hour

waits silently

10,975 metres deep in the mariana trench

a retired naval officer

dived all the way down

to see it twinkling

in the headlights of his submarine

                                                                does life give out its secret?
each night

the moon auditions

but this is

no show

we have a gift for watching 
an animal on the ground

looking skyward

is still

an animal

on the ground