Portraits row on row
Display early British and
American art.

Notable old men,
Newly weds, and families.
Pinned like butterflies.

The ancients did not
Hesitate to build atop
Their predecessors.

But city walls came
Down to make way for narrow
Roads to new places.

I think it was Ashbery who said it,
But I've looked high and low
Without finding the source.
Like snow silently falling
While you are sleeping,
Till the tent pole breaks
Under the accumulated weight,
And you struggle outside
Naked in the beauty of the night.
Nature keeps on plugging away
While we are otherwise occupied.

Imagine returning from the Crusades
With enough money to build
A grand stone house, so far
In the mountains that conflict
Could never find you again.

Sitting in this courtyard,
On the uneven flagstones laid
Long ago, I like to think
They succeeded, at least
For a generation or two.

But history tells us
You can run, but you
Cannot hide. So we who hide
Must return to confront
What is happening
In the world.

At last the wind fades away.
In the clear night sky
Stars send their message
From the past.
Through the stillness,
The roar and thunder
Of waves breaking on the reef.
Protection from the turmoil
Of the outside world.

Do the words of a
Poem repeat in your head
Like song lyrics do?

A strong north westerly wind
blows out of a clear sky.
Walking this shore of sand
swept high, covering rocky ground,
firm and cool under foot,
brings back memories of last October,
the first swim of summer,
the warming sun, the still-too-cold water.
Long before that, sailing to windward
against a north westerly wind and sea,
plugging away against spray and waves,
seemingly endless, till at last, calm water.
The words of the novel  stop my tracks:
"So we beat on, boats against the current,
borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Looking out to sea under today's clear sky,
the sun slowly warms after a swim, likely
the last of this summer, before
our coldest months, wind and showers
sweep in from the southern ocean,
until October comes round again.
The thought warms me, and turning
into the wind and sunshine, I walk
back home along the beach.

You cannot get lost in the bush
Because you are where you are.
Walk in any direction
And you will come out somewhere.
In a film I didn't like at first,
The lead characters are lost
In a swamp searching
For rare orchids; the guide,
The orchid thief, sets up a stick
To find the Sun's shadow,
Musing "It's not about collecting
The thing itself; it's about getting
Immersed in something;
Having it become part of your life;
It's a kind of direction".
Then he knocks over the stick.
There is no shadow to help us.
He and I chose a direction to go,
And it took us away from all that.

A string of meaningless words,
Repeated endlessly,
Can be visual art, it seems.

In 1942 Gorgio Mirandi painted
A still life of a cup and a vase
Because they were there,
And reflected light.

A string of meaningless words
Can be art criticism, it seems.
And may even be poetry?

But string is real:
Tied around my finger,
I feel it and remember.

Stone, glass and steel is real,
If you can touch it,
Otherwise it could just be
An illusion.

The finger prints and DNA
Of all of us who touched
The rusted steel installation,
Despite the signs, are real,
Though you cannot see them
Or feel our presence.

Like the shiny parts
Of bronze statues touched
By each passing viewer,
Do these not form part
Of the work of art?

Written in water
On stone path, calligrapher's
Words evaporate.

Lying, not stretching.
New leaves green above. The sky
Mesmerising blue.

Book of short stories,
Published 1927. Passed
To my mother by her father,
Then to me. A receipt from
Some forgotten purchase,
From March 2001,
Marks a page, a short story
"The Last Leaf".
The camera pulls back
From a close-up: one defiant vine
Leaf on a snow swept wall,
A sign of hope to the child, near death,
Who gazes on it from her window
In the new day dawning.
The camera pans down
To the ground below; fallen ladder,
Artists brushes and the figure,
Presumed dead, of the has-been artist beneath his last great work.
Eyes water; sniffles won't stop.
Try to think.
Restored faith in altruism?
Distrust of poets and their power?
It all comes crashing down to this -
Mother, father, self.

In the wee hours, when
I step out the  tent, moonlight.
Orion watches.

Unseen snow below.
Against the blue sky the burnt
Bleached branches of eucalypts.

Dry creek, yellow sand.
Add water, hands, dull metal.
Copper bracelet shines.

In the coldest month,
violet petals stand out
amid leaves of green

Can the camera and the poet capture
What the mind cannot see?
Is the 'candy cigarette' the voice
Calling the sitter and the viewer alike?
Is it because our number did not
Come up
That we want the voice in McDonald's
'Outside Saigon' to be real?

New gravel pathway,
Softened by rain drops, etched
By flowing water.

The emergency department of a hospital in an outback town.
The unrelenting gaze of the camera.
We watch a father try to comfort his young son.
Medical science cannot explain the boy's fits; further tests do not help.
The camera repeatedly focuses on the father's hands: rough hands
With dirt under the fingernails
Tenderly trying to comfort the boy.
Another patient, a young man who fell from his motorbike a week ago
And now has constant headaches.
His partner, a young woman wearing a high-viz work shirt, looks into the camera to tell his story; her eyes
Show us her innermost fears.
It turns out he is OK. Not so the elderly
Woman suffering from terminal cancer Who fell and bashed her head.
With good cheer she lets the doctors fix her up
So she can go home. A postscript tells us the cancer later took its expected course.
Time for something more cheery? How about
A documentary about a mass wedding
Performed by the Reverend Moon?
Young people from every continent
Gather to marry people they do not know.
Arranged by parents and the church.
Blessings of peace and love to them.
People submit to the strangest things.

Shall I speak of love
Or the mosquitos biting
My feet? Nothing helps.

Green sea under black
Sky. Curious foreboding.
Strangely beautiful.

Woken by the unexpected pre-dawn chatter of birds,
From the furthest reaches of the darkness below,
A woman's voice screams
"Who do you fucken think you are?"

Bees in clover, feet
Beware. Trees in flower. Taste
Honey in the air.

Jabiru. Brolga.
Kookaburra. King parrots,
Blue wrens, now black swans.

New growth. Leaves, flowers.
Bud, unfurl expectantly.
Future uncertain.

Did Confucius mean
Literally to set his
Ideas in stone?

Through coconut oil
Sun burns, Sweat beads. Undeterred,
Green ants explore me.

Sand on my skin, breeze.
Droplets of water, disappear.
Leaving only me.

After a hot dry
Summer, rain. Trees produce new
Leaves, toward the sun.
Lying on a bed
Of dried leaves and twigs, bare skin
Absorbs the sun's gift.

You have to swim out
Deeper if you don't want sand
In your swimming trunks.

I saw your dot painting
In the Art Gallery of the NT.
Dots on the theme of green
Attracted me, drawing me close
To read the curator's note:
"This painting expresses
The sensation of floating
In water and feeling
It's healing force."
Your painting and my poem
On the Lilly pond refer
To this same truth.

Is it only a
Poet who can see through her
Tears and keep writing?

I have seen places
Where nothing at all happened.
Enough to be there.

Aluminium
Crank case cover. Fingers
Help bolts find their thread.

Winter rains. Winter
Sun. Mile after mile wheat fields
Sprout fluorescent green.

Eddying across
The road, thistle seeds, blown by
The wind, seek a home.

Inside my helmet
First my right ear then my left
Asks my mind to scratch.

Clear sky at night. Stars
And moon light the camp. No breeze
To disturb the frost.

At the coldest hour,
Shivering inside, we wait
For the sun's warm light.

Is it only gods who cast
Their form onto stone
When their work is done?
Looking for rock art,
My companion said
I stood up too fast
After searching in vain
Under an overhang.
As I turned to continue
The search, the scaly bark
Of a tree sparkled
Like silver crystals,
The dry Savannah grasses
Glowed white like an
Over-exposed photograph.
The path between them led
To a gallery where a larger
Than life-sized Wandjina
Lay full length on the wall.
The touch of untold fingers
Revealed a gendered image.
From her head rose
A strange protuberance.
I had seen similar
In a distant dream:
heart pounding,
I had confronted
An unearthly feline.
Nothing since, until
An Inca figurine in an
Exhibition years later.
All remain unexplained.
Athena being born
From the head of Zeus?

Floating on a flat
sea, under grey skies, rain-drop
circles overlap.

Back on the beach, a
swimmer sets an umbrella
as she walks away.

Moonlight and gentle breeze
Caress the Great Wall.
Evening star our only companion.
Faintly dogs bark
In the village below.
Through the still night
Distant sounds of straining trucks
And honking horns along
The highway from the provinces,
Driven through the wall
To bring steel to the capital.
One sunset to one sunrise,
In an infinitely repeated cycle.

In a still night under southern stars,
Sleeping in a rough farm shed,
From neighbouring farms
Across the valley, the dogs bark.

In our home city, the sound
Of trams rattling down the road
Blends into the background noise.
But next door, the dogs bark.

In this city, both ancient and new,
With moonlight streaming
In our window across the tiled
Rooftops, the dogs bark.

Beyond my parka
My nose hurts from bitter cold.
Shells crunch under foot.