Drain
While rain makes the earth aquatic,
drowns the slabs of half-built houses,
blurs the horizons of unfinished rooms,
splatters sewer pipes not yet connected,
we crawl through a manhole into the underground,
tunnel beneath the embryonic suburb
where all the nights of the future
are plumbed to pour away
from bodies stripped of suits and dresses,
sweat and love and childhood diseases:
a cloacae maxima of blood and faeces,
antibiotics and hormones flushed
down a splash hole of white.
But for now we are running bent double;
our screams tear around corners, reach the junctions ahead of our feet;
we huddle in the halo of our cigarettes, under the s-bend of our echoes,
our whole lives poised above our heads.
Beautiful Weeds
The beautiful weeds are blazing on Clontarf Hill;
yellow, white, cream-veined, purple gold.
New Holland honeyeaters ruckus
in the banksia and tuarts,
and from the summit I can see the islands,
the big ships chugging into the harbour
slicing a trajectory across a steel grey ocean.
Behind me the red rooves of houses
stack east in lines.
Three butterflies are jousting in the bluest air
dusting their colours onto each other.
What better thing to do with your few days of flight
than to wing and collide with your attraction,
to reproduce in the hours you can,
then exhale and subside onto an undisturbed hillside,
to lay your exquisite wings down
in the limestone and grasses,
down amongst the beautiful weeds?