Bright Edge
Colour-fast guerrilla knitting fades.
October again: koels are calling,
gradually upping pitch and volume
like a child strategically ignored.
Is Misty the ferret still missing?
A man in a chalk-white shirt steps out
between a pair of lions
(their eyes carefully made up with a texta),
onto a slew of sodden flyers:
“No commute. No overheads. NO BOSS.”
A hot October: brain-shaped spaces
of almost supernatural purple
loom over roofs with the odd blue tile.
At the door ajar behind him still
a small hand is waved. He steps across
a springy strip of buffalo grass
scattered with bat-handled mandarins
to the musical space of his car.
With a child on the cusp of babble
and a parent falling back on “thing,”
why would he wonder when he last thought,
But if I went round speaking frankly
I’d be out of a job pretty soon.
A wattlebird startled by the whoop
shakes a brace of droplets down on him.
Thin shocks of casuarina needles
and a bright edge of cloud overhead.