Confeatheration   The mud-bank off the Island mid-river, Enlarged at low tide Gathers water-birds in a Meeting, often presided By up to five pelicans.   Even at high tide There’ll be two or three senators With many lesser water-birds, Noisy, assertive gulls Never at a loss, Resting, ruminating, digesting.   Valerie Murray

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These Astonishments Cosy Corner, southern coast, Western Australia   Surmounting the dune I observe in the same instant in the cove’s confine a man kitted in tartan kilt squalling a bagpipe, a dinghy glinting while dinting the wind-whitened chop, surfers waiving a minor wave, women in beachwear reconfirming beauty’s contours, young boys jigging kites and […]

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Flowers on the Bridge St Joseph Cupertino pray for us   At speed on the motorway I see with flickering eye, the flower-bunch tied to the bridge rail; and see it properly for the first time, where the road crosses the canyon of river-through-sandstone: far below.   But because there’s no pedestrian path on it […]

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Ten haiku     under the duck decoy the pond mixes rain     thru the fog our pitter-patter for each other     stronger in the spring breeze our friends’ gift of wind chimes     on the rocks the last wave silences the last wave     VIP cars one leaf caught in […]

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Motherlode   We drove along the highway, she sleeping, me thinking and listening to radio talk, stories of war, stories of flood, and loving her, and then she woke and we rattled on, dodging the time before us, talking of people and gossip, theories, and nothing, listened to music. Trucks thundered past, and sandstone ravines, […]

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Where Broadway Bends for Jerry, written where Broadway bends   I often sit in front of Grace Church at 10th Street where Broadway bends. A cherry tree once stood here not giving way not even for Broadway   I often sit in front of Grace Church, tourists taking pictures of no cherry tree and me […]

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  Brief* Garden Here I sit, in my lamplit bungalow, with the warm thick rain drumming on the roof and leaking through the holes, with a glass of gin … and from the boys’ quarters the tentative tooting of flutes. Donald Friend, Diaries, May 13, 1958   We turn off from the Galle Road to […]

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The Teardrop Stoop Teardrop (verb): To stoop downwards in a teardrop shape Stoop (verb): To tuck in the wings and dive headfirst from a height                         Terms of Falconry   I knew her first as a brancher, pin-feathered, gawky, mewing for tidbits, daughtered   to a haggard; she, strafed by hunger streaks. I cast the […]

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Zuckerberg’s Dissident We try to stay in touch when you’re away. Parental love runs deeper than you know and truth be told we miss you every day.   Friends indicate that Facebook is the way but selfie boastfulness is not our go. We try to stay in touch when you’re away.   Within our private […]

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The Temptation I hope I’ll never try to imitate my mother’s way of death: her low despairing cry,   perhaps a choking; the leaving behind of breath to sink in soft pillows and become a thing changed, like nothing on earth;   her cold room in an odd way hollow after she failed to rouse […]

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