a building site

Here, because so little of my work gets sent out, because I’m working on three books at once, and because what we have here is at least a little of the surface of our building project, I’ve released another few thoughts on this place, driven by Cathy’s need for a shed and my own increasing despair at the vast and growing concrete slab of Melbourne.

I have to say it smells consistently sweet here.

Shed: exhortation

(because we live here only nominally)

Each beam every
Noggin complicates our space:
Word by phrase populate this
Address number: lose fingerprint gain
Split nail and puzzle order
And reward and nature and
Material layer and temperature and flow
Walk me through in dreams: nobody
Told you to do it except vision of
Vista-filled clearing
Insisted like a dog nose, eye
Singular and no question once
Four o’clock spreadsheet found
End and first line:
Cliché by mangled conjunction
Clad in stone and steel and soft sheet
Insulated glassily, questions
Delayed for their time their
Own population in town mind
Rented and full anyway of
Blithe new furniture
Build by kingfisher
Puddle and fur
Finch and eagle glancing
Drip and feather
Path of koala unalterable
Treeward certainly change,
I shall little by minor sprain
Cheek by stumble in sweet
Repeated ignorance build
Repose:
This field is my ocean and I
Bloody fisherman
Dwell until closing time paddocky—
Until next mishap—proud fashioning
Love severally large
As usual as foolishly as due by
Law and preparation and fate
Soft turned in the way of water
Away from a street holding fast
Something next in mind never
Far away.

Grey violence of first magpie
Permit me to pray
One more day.

Paul Voermans 2022