The Fish Pond (Visiting the Little Sisters of the Poor, Mount St Joseph, Randwick, 1960s) There was our weatherboard church, suburban, Protestant and insignificant and that massif of brick on brick on sandstone foundations; the contrast between a light, flimsy, almost vaporous, among the pews (how vulnerable, how easily ignored, among lawnmowers triumphant) and as it was, captured there, dark honey on brown lino floors, wide as acres. Deep as the rubbed varnish of centuries, faith-polished. And a gleam off wood when mid-afternoon, sunlight slipped through or lustrous, sliding around the marble columns like languor. To enter needed girding. This…