Solstice 2020:persistence

Stillness like caramel
slips
dissolves
burnt
on tongue and swallow
feeling so much so
it’s yet to be
paint-spattered and weary.
Everything stands in for love
even death and seasons
for parts of love at least.

He stands listening to the rain
in the neighbourhood of your simile.
He is alarmed still at his invincibility
the charm of his own grin.
The poo Rorschach fooled him,
sometimes shit is just shit.
The overexamined life not worth extra—
genuine complacency costs
more than the petrochemical kind.
And anyway he’d rather walk.

NOTE TO GO WITH THE FIRE ALARM INSTRUCTIONS

the new occupiers at our joint got this note

• respect the geckos
• watch the blackbirds but just grumble
• doves nest in the treefern
• rats cross the fence (not possums)
• at dusk our bats do not stop
• but almonds and apples and apricots and figs draw parrots on a single day
• keep mulch and water on the magnolias
• gall wasp want drowning twice a year
• mice foiling when weather drives them in
• when the days are baking three days still
• you may then vent night air
• (don’t cook indoors)
• (not just because the grill knob’s dodgy)
• bee keeper
• bird watcher
• arrak distiller
• pomegranate adorner
• Olafur Arnalds player
• all okay
• UFO survivor
• dog stoner
• rose stripper
• council dobber
• watch out let lips thin
• when the day reaches in
• shutter
• in the seasons of wattle and butterfly and eel
• respect the snakes early
• (if kookaburras are pairing you’re okay)
• on the edges and at water
• (bin chickens eat them too)
• walk for cranes
• gargle to magpies in their own voice
• no matter what nonsense
• (to shirtless cyclists this does not apply)
• keep the wild pear parrot poo off your car
• find the frogmouth if you can
• welcome the passage of wind back to front but not north-south
• listen for the rain but don’t count on it
• drier here and uphill on a treadly
• down on your way into town
• or the Westgarth or all fish and chips
• always down to the creek in eel flood
• when shampoo and shit run freely
• where in fennel autumn a platypus and even button quail
• let alone thrip and wild bees and cicadas throng
• be in on New Year and out Saturday mornings
• specify grams to the pasta dude
• scoops to the nuts
• and individual prawns
• while metres of boerewors
• thumbs of fetta
• and single slices of margherita will do
• afternoons of mud crab
• slow minutes of vegan banh mi
• late nights of mixed lot everything salad
• high noons of mowing
• and midnight choppers
• fireworks! Whenever
• buy yourself time here
• have the silly stuff delivered
• do not go out unless you must
• until the cats roast their brains on the heating
• and dogs in the noon of the sun
• feel it here
• do
• with all your hearts and your kids and grandkids
• godmothers and uncles and cream-faced teens
• regret schooling as much as they won’t remember yours
• die here if you can
• moving on is for wimps
• live in dark as well as your friends of the sucker under tin
• pale and a bit bitey if disturbed
• live here and nowhere else
• this deserves you and you this
• live here fortunately and lucky and kind
• long and eager and free
• wait till your children bust out
• live here some more
• some thing more
• be gentle to the moths and spiders
• even the Jack Russell next door loves you
• all day
• sometimes everyone and everything is just fine
• you cannot buy that for money
• but you can
• you did