Following me, old footprints
Firstly is the bit about feeling older, muchgirdled by this early growth of leafageto offset all that grease of trams and buses
diffused into our dirty urban air.For what, I ask you, was somebody called our saviourin the turbulent middle-east (still in trouble,
of course it must be) two long Ks ago?Light flickered on dwellers in death's dark shadowyet those turbulent sandy nations truckle on,
just where their ancestors ambled out of Africatoward the hideogram of history.
Hungry, long-legged in the walnut treea falcon pecks away at faceless lumpage,driftings of down descending: bleakly,
with mortality made articulatein air at least, I'd say.Little grey bones lie in the lawn.
They won't be getting olderbut we can.
A deceptive calm
Scrambling down the last flankthrough prickly-moses or frailfringes, headhigh bluegumsbent by years of salt bluster,tussock grass in its bunchings,dry, uneven, slippery,aromas in moist gullies.He knew it all now by heart;those mountains were his body,their perfume of musk and rotcould be our past.
Heat, salt: a deceptive calmreigned on the rolled hills like haze.Kicking out a shower of stonesan echidna bulldozed fastfleeing some nameless danger.One cloud lay on the sea;decades drifted on those tidesrippled and crimped as a brain.
Caught in a brambletangle creekbedunder leather leaves, overrapidly washed ellipsoidsthere lie the ad hoc remainsof a deserted railway,tramway rather, rust-raddledand twisted out of all shape.It used to bring down timberto a non-existent pier:such iron can be called passing.
The point of noon yawns alwaysout of reach, raw paradise,and we can't feel the vacuous namesour tongues have laid on our livesor on this twig-thick shoreline.
Chris Wallace-Crabbe AM is an Australian poet and Emeritus Professor in The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne. He has a distinguished career as poet, essayist, literary critic, teacher, cultural ambassador and advocate for the humanities and creative arts.