Frog in ornamental pond, Fitzroy Gardens, East Melbourne
Sticky-tongued,I leap and swallow,kick-swim downto the cooling depths.The afternoon suggests digestion.
Above mea child's shadow throws bread scrapsuntil called away by a disallowing voice.The hulls of ducks bunchthen become orderly fleets.There's always a straggler.
Disturbed days too.Surface hiss of cigarette butt,splash and roll of beer can,trespass of a Labrador —green reeds bent or broken,water shuddering.
Night is best.My croakingjoins the slippery choirof fellow frogs,semi-submerged baritones.We pause to look up atour silver patrons, the stars,sad that their applausewont reach usfor light years.
This is where I belong —learning the water, alertto all manner of winged food,when hailstones or a boy's sharp stickstab through the green skin of lily pads.
To be a frogor not to be a frog?Now, that's an interesting question.
I'll give you my answerthe next time someonewho hasn't got cooking pot eyesbends down to kiss me.
The scalpel is and isn't a wand
Here are the patients, theirOrifices and organsSecreting, bleeding, failing, slowly, quickly,Probed, slit, suctioned, stitched, sent toIntensive care, in faith, in hope, perhaps beyond medicine's ambitious reach.The waiting for X-rays, the doctor's verdict as you rub at a spot on your trousers.All the flowers, get well cards, visitors whose smiles and jokes sometimes falter.Leaving is best. You feel the sun warm the body that is yours again for a while.
City workers during morning rush hour, Collins Street, Melbourne, 2012
Perhaps not fully awake you exit Parliament Station, alight from trams.Expected you are — to join the ballet of the brisk.Rebel by sitting on a park bench. Such a luxury may incite aScowl on a passing face. Reading theObituaries in The Age may distract, you'll learn how many times a certainNuclear scientist was married. This knowledge of a more troubled life mayAllow you to take a break from painting the town grey.Look up at the bird-borrowed sky. It's not raining rats and tarantulas.
What a gift is hunger. Because of it your ancestors left their caves,Explored plains, valleys, rivers, seas. TheirAdventures became stories, paintings, songs.There's the story of each person, on the trains, trams, street corners.How vulnerable you are, how strong you are. I want to reveal yourEssence via the camera of this poem, as you swarm andRush in the business district, glance again at wristwatches.
Peter Bakowski's poems have appeared in literary magazines worldwide and have been translated into Arabic, Bahasa-Indonesion, Bengali, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Polish. He has published five