Late Sun in February

This hill takes diamond when a slant
of sun ignites each filament
and tilted grass must show how blonde
is rampant to go vagabond

in streaming pinheads where a wind,
that’s fugitive, yet disciplined,
directs each needlepoint of gleam
toward my elsewhere and my home.

Then hill takes opal, seed-heads shy
their orange facets at the sky,
and the bushland’s underlit
by orange that transfigures it.

This bridle path tracks Telstra wires
where frogmouths hunch on their desires
while in the rife stormwater ditch
endangered frogs locate their pitch.

I can’t live easy in my times.
Who can? Some discontent consumes
my interest whose better face is
where self and lumen share their places.

So what’s the self? A slant of light
that must move on yet stay in sight?
The self’s a verb, I self, we selve
unfolding from the selves we shelve

yet losing nothing when it casts
the lighted moments it outlasts,
the marvelous that supervenes
along the world’s exact routines.

A silk of smoky blue and grey,
Is now the hillside’s overlay.
And elsewhere’s where the light is seen
and home will hive where light has been.