,…   like the Mets I’m coming up to bat

in the bottom of the 9th, or maybe the 8th, if I’m lucky

but far behind in the game—

and the music seems to have stopped to listen.

—Tony Towle listening to the radio, in ‘Digression, 5/10/03’


Our first whole day on the island:

        coffee at the shop, then drive to the beach

at Cloudy Bay & walk it—half an hour, more,

        keeping to the liminal line on the sand

where the water has just dried.

        Vast clouds of Pacific Ocean gulls

rise as we approach, mill in the air, like tea-leaves stirred

        in a clear cup.

White underneath, glimpses of white flash

        as they bank, circle, & spiral away.

                                                   Successive

        waves of them do this—till the beach is cleared.

The sea is on our right

        as we walk—southwards, I guess—a long gentle arc.

Just us.  The air clear, as if recently washed—as we advance slowly

        upon the distance. Dome of sky overhead.

The scale is a little vast for photographing.

Eventually I take a series of photos—that I will glue where they

       overlap—

mountains that, as the eye moves left, become

       the heads,

& then open water—& heads again. At two points

       I take some vertical shots—one capturing

white cloud towering above,

       above darker blue-black cloud at its base—

in the foreground showing the brass-coloured

       sand

where water an inch deep slides back to the sea,

       glazed momentarily, showing

the sky & cloud—immense—reflected there

a mirror image. It looks great: Ireland, New Zealand, I think.

        A little light for either—

but they’ll like that, surely. Further left

       I do this again: sky above, clear—& unbroken horizon

where sky meets sea—& Cath, knee deep, out

        beyond the second

line of waves—her white top & green pants—where she appears

        a second time, upside down, reflected, closer to—

        where she stands,

admiring New Zealand, or the South Pole,

        where they stand, in the distance. Stand notionally.

It is Macquarie Island I think Cath thinks is

        next stop/last stop. Along with White Rock, Pedra Blanca—

And then the Pole.
             As I walk   —we turn finally & set out

back to the car—   I seem to be addressing

        my Dublin friends, & Michael Fitzjames.

The Dubliners, Tony Curtis particularly, I always think of

        on Bruny.

Tony travels & would like this—the one bit of Australia

        he hasn’t seen. I think because we bought this place

soon after I met them. Michael’s Di came down

        with Cath on her last trip—Coogee friends—Sydney.

He’s got my email address now—rang Cath requesting it—

        having decided

to move a step closer to the present—the late part

        of the 20th century, the early part of this. Or has he been

emailing people for years—others, not me?

        I mostly want to tell him

how much less I can see as my eyes deteriorate—

        though actually

seeing is what I do best, what keeps my mind

        happy, busiest—the constant noting of detail

& of composition, relationship—

        but in fewer kinds of light

(as the mind thinks

        in its own disordered way

—about history, some line

        of logic or rhetoric or argument

                                                   —’memes’, are they?—

sorted, shuffled,

        recorded. Confirmed.

Stirred like the tea-leaf birds …

        for some furthering remark or for

launching off with

        —(the article I came across

that I do not want to write

        opening it in my

notebook

        ‘Necessary Fictions’—

something ‘on spec’

        for a ditzy, high-paying editor

who might not take it

        who says she wants something ‘philosophical’

yike,

        you gibbering idiot

—something philosophic, & apropos of nothing—

        you write it!)

As an artist

        there is much here he could paint

& I am conscious, driving from the beach, of the shades of

        olive & of lighter green—

the silver-grey tree trunks, & the ‘black’—

        the clouds

of every shade

        from palest silver & shale

to blue & blue-grey-black,

        the telegraph poles—at long, country intervals—the same

regular grey-white, solemn, dramatic contrast

        with the spinach-green behind (I saw one once,

recently limed, a startling mint or menthol stripe

        like

the green on the face of Mme Matisse—but it has faded.

        I see that pole again this trip

& it is the regulation neutral silver-grey)

         … the tan

—& tan-mixed-with-coffee grounds

        (of burnt wood & wet leaves, ti-tree)—

that shades the blond sand, that swathes &

        firms & darkens

around knolls & depressions. Is it water-courses,

        or the wind in the sand? A Siamese cat’s

                                                        colouring.
Jules I also think of, at work, & the others—

        Mel,

Michael, Teri.

        We have known each other so long,

have worked together—Julie & I—over twenty years.

        Watching each other die—or

“move towards the end of our lives”.

        More considerate as we get older.
It is weird to be somewhere they don’t know.
        They’d like it. The New Zealanders

would like it

        —it’s ‘McCahon’ enough (tho does it lack the

required ‘punitive gloom’?)—

        the peaked, volcanic-looking hills

around the harbours,

        the peninsulas that recede one behind the other

into a uniform powdery blue—

        & Michael, painter Michael, (so many

                Michaels in this)—

to whom it won’t be strange

        —having done his Tasmanian time

decades ago—

         but Bruny is different, distinct somehow,

material for his eye.

        (Di liked it.)
Laurie, another distant friend, walks a less trackless landscape—

        in the footsteps of countless, commentating

British, Normans & Saxons,

        walking where Mathew Arnold walked,

or Wells. Here, people

        in a different headspace

walked before me of course.

        Cath walks here now.

She says, from the bedroom  —(as I

        wash the dishes)—

they are Kelp Gulls, about the same size as Pacific Gulls

        & a bit darker on top,

gathering in groups of a couple of hundred

        about now, on

“islands south of Hobart”.

        Not quite the span.

Called Dominicans because of their black & white,

        their span just a little less
The big number makes it likely. We always see Pacific Gulls

        in ones or twos, or small quantities.  Ordinary

seagulls, by comparison, look tiny when we see them

       back in Adelaide. These are large,

ocean-going birds.
I break some kindling for next day’s fires

        take a photo, out the window, of the three trees

I love—three vast simple lines stemming

        from the same place in the scrub

& spreading apart just slightly as they soar—like

        planes at an air show,

about to peal off dramatically though they never do,

        three tense splayed fingers passing up

through blue & cloud

        & blue.

One has dropped a branch in this year of drought.
I love the island very much. Tho I do not know it as well as Cath.

        It takes a while to settle in.

I love the places closer to us—the field opposite, ‘behind’ us—so

        French & open & yellow,

against banks of trees along its furthest edge—

        where the eagle appears most summer nights at sunset,

patrols for food, something

        whose movement will betray it in the open field.

Wooreddy Rd—the view up to it,

        the view to the right now they’ve cut down the trees.

Which I at first regretted. Regret still, though the view

        of green, against the odd black trunk,

is magical—if less majestic

        than the effect of trees on both sides of the avenue—a road

that dips down

        then climbs, crests & disappears,

about halfway up the mountain.

        Best—though it’s too good to be true—the view

back, from that first Wooreddy crest, down, across the field,

        thru framing branches & stark verticals:

a field of yellow, distantly bounded by a copse of trees,

        by trees following

a water course, & beyond that a bay of astonishing blue

        with an island in it. It all comes out

of Modersohn-Becker,

        Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Gabriele Munter.

Michael would look at it & see the cliché it suggests.

        What to do with it?

For some reason I want him to see it. For the reason

        that I won’t be able to see it myself for much longer—

perhaps? Tho this turns out

        not to be true.
The view from the pub is different so many times,

        & mysterious—near & far

so intermingle, & on one day register

        as firmly-plaited, woven—of air & moisture—a skein

of softened white & blue.

        (We’re so far south—

tho I guess we’re facing Dover.  Dover, Tasmania—

        not Laurie’s & Arnold’s Dover.)

Cloud like woven bread,

        moist,

stretched between the heads either side of the harbour—

        & above,

or in front of, the island’s shallow peak: Satellite Island,

        that sits mid harbour dank & receding,

while the cloud

        is low & cool & restful—a white rope of cloud-bread,

that lies over it.

        And on another day—different.
New Blundstone boots—just broken in, but about new—$10.

        Cath spied them.  He’s had his

ten years, still going, Michael says—

        a different Michael. Lorraine’s brother, Michael. Might

see me out, I say.  “Lord, take these boots

        off of me. I can’t use them anymore”. Tho in fact I’m

not about to die—& my eyes are holding out…
Music is on the radio, quietly, as I write this.

        It seems to have stopped to listen.