Charlie Darwin

Passing beauty It's moving, just ahead of the player's most clever feet. Every four years, we fill a cup, then pour it out, a month of dreams. Was it just last week that Bergkamp flicked with orange elegance, side-footing space and time? No, he is long gone now, off fielding forty years. Others follow. Messy time melts beauty, remoulds it, casts it always anew. It never ages, constantly fired, as we fade, we watchers, yesterday's players, passing. Twenty sips at the cup will fill a lifetime; held safe in keeper's hands. –P. S. Cottier

Charlie Darwin On the back of a ten pound note

There's definitely a great big hairy chest, Beneath that stiff Victorian coat. –James Morris

Not a prayer, more like express post Our miners Which art in Australia Famous be thy names Thy hearts awaken Thy profits share With the poor both here and overseas Show us this day our country's generosity And forgive us our honesty As we forgive those who spin profits against us And lead us not into depression But deliver us from crass greed For thine is the earth's wealth, today's potential glory But it's never for ever Amen –Jill Sutton

Time lingers to wash away words

while the leaf dreams inside the leaf

the flower lifts its head from its scattered sleep and meets the sun –Lidija Šimkute

In all the many malls Lou Reed still belts it out While Andy Warhol revolves at 33rpm from far down below Watching history repeat Into naughty noughty nostalgia For such bravado can only be Applauded if tickets sell While greatest hits fill the shelves In all the many malls –B. W. Shearer

before the fall before the fall of thinking, before rain, before the song of wet earth, low white noise. hear it as the chant of the unseens — ripple in a magpie's throat — as the sigh of a city's prayer cushions — forgiveness has the weight of faith and cloud. and now rain, symphonic on tin, washing walls of doubt –Kevin Gillam

Indications A pall descends, a noticing of mixed arrangements, appointments double booked, time out of kilter, meetings not attended.

Reticence accompanies engagement, reluctance to become too fully present, consciousness of a cloudiness in days formerly transparent.

Voice tone, word choice alter. Less apparent, the picking up and putting down or starting to put down, a wrong drawer opened; actions observed, corrected.

From lull and torpor brisk activity sharpens awareness. A task completed seems to satisfy. Emergence and retreat conform the days. –Lerys Byrnes

paint your paint is layered, scraped

& wiped coloured borders divide

the canvas like a country like the parts

of a long marriage a chorus of roles

sung around & around in the cry

of grandchildren & their grandchildren

fluttering a story a blanket shake song of dust –Rory Harris

Black cockatoos Presaged by primordial cries slow and awkward they came, pulled as if by unseen strings to