So many novels begin on staircases or in hallways.
The only light in the house through the Venusian greenglass above the landing

Oceans of dust and the thousand shadows of childhood

Converging on the woven runner on this black wood

The occasional chair gnarled into the roots of the house
Memory is just a landscape

This is a city of blind corners and declining platforms

Sandstone disappearing into a vale of leaves

Staircases down into the flood
In July a leadlight rose is

A sacred heart

A clot

A drunkard’s eye
In August –
The sensuality of movement is

Sitting on the station platform

Amongst puddles like upturned mirrors

The copper air
Between Newtown and Redfern

Through spinning bike spokes, the stillness

I take a window seat

To stare at my own reflection
Every edge is in the misaligned stitching

Of this green jumper’s sleeve

Damp

Pushing aside the branches that overgrow the footpath
Every edge

Three ghosts

A transparent sky

After a decade of rain