a long line in you said to me
we'd the neat folds of bitumen to
negotiate, the rose-warm winter of
the Katoomba pass
when i carried more weight and the ginger
in my beard had yet to creep north
(the vain effort of my chest hair to unite the front)
when we passed too close to the bulge
and the lone truck-stop bookshelf
decided I'd read Bukowski and not
Wyatt - when the fog rolled (like a reverse in-camera
trick, something from the 70's) down the valley
back into the Nargun-caves -
the light of you, the think bottle-green of a
swimming tattoo, the like
and seem of
a fey nose balanced on the almost crescent
sealed almonds,
the frame red
the defiant child streak, a crimson-more
to mark the turning of your 21's to teens again -
I gave you five, a long-fingered minute
Three One Thousand
Four One Thousand
and then blew out the candle of your dreams
and rapt awake my heir and hide,
so much in so little
'where do you see yourself in five years?'
like at twenty you knew, what you knew now
and sought burning; not knowing of tornadoes
on red-lakes and tea-tree sleep walkers
(they said it wasn't chicken-pox) for sure
just shingle-roofed village green
the Welsh-principle applied again -
when you visit your - and his - will you leave
some piece of me buried in a vine-yard,
basting with a simple Italian...
out in the sand on the long, fleeing desert -
coiled in the back, child-clothe collateral, one
grabbed toy, an inter-state
backwards coup - a child, some town
the Byron-shore and you
.
