As we climb the dim-lit verges

of Observatory Hill, once Windmill Hill

bicycle lamps whirl past like fireflies,

                orbiting in the dark

 city kids kick-boxing or exercising

     in green space, lights blinking on the Bridge.

We set up telescopes. 
The sky is picketed with stars

a gibbous moon, its bent man bundling sticks,

         a far-off plane, moving slowly, glowing

like a rogue planet. The lit-up time ball

that drops each afternoon at 1 pm

                                   towers behind us

no longer calibrating ships’ chronometers

but accurate to the second. 
The Emu in the Sky’s defined by nebulae

                        hundreds of light years away

visible against our Milky Way, body and legs

the trailing dust lanes to Scorpius, head resting

in the Coalsack dark nebula, a map to the Universe.

Once seen, like a Rorschach ink-blot

            the night sky will never look the same again.      
Far below, Fiona Hall’s

            Folly for Mrs Macquarie, a filigree of cages

in Sydney Sculpture Walk, Botanic Gardens

images a self-imposed confinement

                   barbed wire, an axe, some bones

a domed roof of Norfolk Island pine

too brittle to make excellent ships’ masts.