The drought continues
even as leaves
speak of autumn.
Mining the land
speaks of leaves.
More trees are leaving,
felled forests of life.
We have become
the surface planet,
surface hard, brittle.
Imagine the jobs
to replant our patch
so that it becomes
the planet it was.
I digress: tonight
bush burning
turned the dusk
to fire
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In a moonless sky
time travels back
to us as light,
showers us with
the brevity of speed,
passes us by
in silence
as we revolve,
and resolves
to look out
for this one
earth
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I grow a green frame
around my patch,
plants climbing
towards a flotsam sky.
Off the new highway
greenless and treeless
and even leafless,
without the brush
and scent of sage
or a camellia dawn,
living in shadows,
people,
pale from windblown pollution.
Yet even there
where the horizon
changes from green
to grey
cosmos finds a way
to grow in concrete.
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I set off to sweep the path
so that nobody would slip.
The old broom rustled and
dipped scattering autumn
calm on a branch of sun
until sure enough, a leaf
cloud settled into mulch
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Now I set the clock
on possum time
the trot across the roof
and cautious descent.
Possum marks the time
when day casts off
its chores to cloak
the moment in dusk.
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The only sound.
Sycamore leaves
lifting, drifting
as sunlight
silhouettes
across footsteps
deep in soil.
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When sky pours its heart
out and garden listens,
and a buzzing is heard
and greening perches
and salvia elegans
hover like dragonflies,
then mind flies off
with a cloud of birds
and my currawong
returns
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