The full throated thrum of the service trucks

and i am swimming in frangipani

with sprays of white aster against green foliage

on the stone walls of Neutral Bay, the odour 
of rubbish bins like stale piss behind

the bus shelter and the relentless high

speed arboreal rat-tat-tat of the

cicadas. The young carry the sun about 
in their bodies, bright-seared and deathless,

savouring mangos like edible stars and

five-dollar-a-cup coffee. The continent

is prodigal of wonders — pouched animals, 
billed beavers, shaggy trees dropping their skin

or iron-barked; and not these only but

urban stylites like latter day saints atop

their third story Thai restaurants and weeping
from the first bitter sip of ale, through

the spring roll starters, weeping over their

minced chicken salad and cheap bubbly.

The cicadas’ hum is the cantus firmus 
of a city at song, chanting the hours,

the blessed bodies, the sacred hearts of Neutral Bay.

The service trucks stop under a window where

the stylites meet to weep the city all aflame 
from the inside.