Jackson

against the blue and white spring sky five black cockatoos move lead and follow, pair and part, flap and glide doing together their unpromoted dance Read more

I sit through the doublebungers katherinewheels romancandles the flags names arrays of light the patterns attached to buildings and bridges the sputterings and mutterings the again and again and agains set to classic hits waiting for the seconds of silence the fizzing upward rush the half-breath pause the one sky-filling perfect plain chrysanthemum First published Read more

     in spring sunlight      the silver lizard’s      ancient skin The skink is five million years old Chasing a three-hundred-million-year-old bug it runs under the raised base of a steel post The iron is as old as Earth The fence: two winters The skink emerges, scampers, pauses Filtering the rain of wavelengths its scaly integument glistens, passes Read more

For the little things … The rough uneven pavers with spring weeds sprouting in the cracks The painted path between International and Domestic The travellers asleep in the sun beside it The lawn they’re allowed to lie on The modest terminal, its low ceiling The little bird swooping beneath it The tip of its beak Read more

I let my legs and arms come off and lay them in the dust My long muscles melt Fluid oozes all over the boards and out across the universe The head comes off the neck like a paddymelon from a dry vine in late summer between a fence and a highway, rolls away and falls Read more

When I looked in the book I found: Time is the temple—Time itself and Space— observed, marked out, to make the sacred place on the four-quartered sky, the inwalled ground. ——Ursula K. Le Guin, “Contemplation at McCoy Creek” If I’m good, Lord, if my karma serves, will you bring me back as a bass guitar? Read more