At Home in Clifton Hill Roaming the green corridor beside Merri Creek, we’re gladof game-wakened dog songand the weir-teased water, far from the wipe-out week.Here where we fatten on heart’s ease, one among us is not at home.Someone caught in an endless trip masking misery through Melbourne streets; shrouding night in a picnic shelter walled in by the road embankment, tiered cliff and the half-pulled curtains of bush that lets the bike paths in.Someone now cast in forgetfulness, out cold – dumped down in a sleeping bag moulded like a burial mound. And by their side neatly aligned, threads of an abandoned bedside? paired runners with socks tucked inside.Feet plunge on passing peddles;eyelids hood a second look;dogs lose themselves in scent. You turn hungry for homein a cool hip, tear shaped suburb [1]. [1] Brown, Jenny. ‘From a tip to serene and green’ in The Age: Domain, May 3, 2008, pp 4-5.Strait Record...nature has provided many means for securing concord...not merely to afford pleasantries... Erasmus We've only paddled in the strait; only strolled by light's diamond-scatteredcabinet of glass, though we've bakedhere in luck with mates all holiday. We've been lulled behind sun shades by romance on the Honeycomb Coast. But we'd break the beached ranks if peace walked like a prince on this water and overruled a smoking wind. We'd push in and block the minders; climb on a friend's shoulder to look and cup a burst of whoops in our hands. We'd swamp the TV shows with the news; damp down Tax Cuts with mean print and swell Miracle with coloured headlines,if peace rode up in an armoured tank on a carpet of shirts, out of dunes, into Jerusalem and Baghdad. As it is, peace is the shy achiever in our house; the mortar sandwiched between bricks, the pipe that fetches and freights in water. It is the squat chair underneath our coat; the switch for light and heat; the bulb winteringfor spring, plumb deep in bedded-down garden. It is the roots holding the trunk up like a hip; the footpath jogged on beside stretches of green; the freeway whizzed down without a second thought. It is the car cuing the speedster past, who gives them the finger; the click of amber and the bridge