Falling up through the hole in the roof

When I see you now,
it is from orbit, blinking unseen
across a sky too bright

Homesickness and Perspective

Yesterday was the first real punch-in-the-heart homesickness. It’s a real relief to have these electric internets to keep the channels open, though. And to have friends to remind me that it really isn’t that far away, and that no problem is really all that huge. This is like a friendly version of the Total Perspective Vortex.

A Brisbane Afternoon Time-Lapse

Cardboard cutout clouds stack up
Heavy with the town’s collective breath
Above the sausage tree and strangler figs

Slender palms like nervous schoolkids
Line up by the shallow water
While the bell hangs still and silent

The rainstorm breaks
In a Busby Berkeley dagger-dance
Across the writhing river

The rain returning home
Makes a heady aromatic tea
In the gutter’s gum-leaf dams

I am excited to see The Nemo’s time-lapse project up and running. Splendid work, sir!

For Ben

Against a flat blue Summer evening, reflected in the flat blue glass façades, the gurgling fruit bats are the only things of substance, until finally a song cracks open the shell that surrounds us.

Bathtime

To the tiny honey-eaters, gravity is trivial, yet approaching water is a delicate dance, refining the approach in successive sorties, ever closer until finally the belly just kisses the water. There is always an over-zealous life-guard who stays dry, yet chases any perched anxiously on the edge of the bath back up into the branches with a chiding tutter. But then the dare-devils arrive, and all take their dive, in quick succession with precision and delight. The spiky foliage fills with the fluttering of drying feathers.