Judith Beveridge

They listen to the myna birds dicker in the grass. The child’s blue shoes are caked with garden dirt. When he runs, she sees the antics of a pair of wrens. She works the garden, a pot of rusting gardenias has given off its ales and infused the danker germinations of her grief. She watches her son chase pigeons, kick at the leaves piled high. Now, a magpie adds to his cascades of laughter as he runs with the hose, pours a fine spray, happy to be giving to the grass this silver courtship. She sighs, watches the drops settle in. Today, who can explain the sadness she feels. Surely this day is to be treasured: the sun out, the breeze like a cat’s tongue licking a moon of milk; her son expending himself in small, public bursts, happy among clover where bees hover, and unfold centrefolds of nectar. Today, who can explain the heaviness in her head, as if all her worries were tomes toward a larger work, one she knows she will never finish, but to which she must keep adding, thought by thought. She sweeps the petals, smells their russet imprint. Soon dusk will come with an envoy of smoke and her son outlast her patience by a rose. Already he is tiring, puling at the flowers. It won’t be long before they’ll go in, listen to the jug purr comfort. He’ll sleep and she’ll lie back, or get up to unhook the cry of her cat from the wire door. Now, a few cicadas are idling, giving each other the gun and a cockatoo calls, a haughty felon. She sighs, knowing she won’t escape her mood today, the turned earth or its rank persuasions; her child’s petulance flaring like an orchid, or a cockatoo’s unruly crest. Today, she knows she will need to consider her unhappiness, of what she is a prisoner – if not the loss of hope’s particulars. Her son soaks the path, rinses the sky of its featureless blue. He is giving that water, now, to everything.

Today I watched a boy fly his kite. It didn’t crackle in the wind – but gave out a barely perceptible hum. At a certain height, I’d swear I heard it sing. He could make it climb in any wind; could crank those angles up, make it veer with the precision of an insect targeting a sting; then he’d let it roil in rapturous finesse, a tiny bird in mid-air courtship. When lightning cracked across the cliff – (like quick pale flicks of yak-hair fly-whisks) – he stayed steady. For so long he kept his arms up, as if he knew he’d hoist that kite enough. I asked if it was made of special silk, if he used some particular string – and what he’d heard while holding it. He looked at me from a distance, then asked about my alms bowl, my robes, and about that for which a monk lives. It was then I saw I could tell him nothing in the cohort wind, that didn’t sound illusory.

Begin in a cave. Listen to the floor boil with rodents, insects. Weep for the pups that have fallen. Later, you’ll fly the narrow passages of those bones, but for now — open your mouth, out will fly names like Pipistrelle, Desmodus, Tadarida. Then, listen for a frequency lower than the seep of water, higher than an ice planet hibernating beyond a glacier of Time. Visit op shops. Hide in their closets. Breathe in the scales and dust of clothes left hanging. To the underwear and to the crumbled black silks — well, give them your imagination and plenty of line, also a night of gentle wind. By now your fingers should have touched petals open. You should have been dreaming each night of anthers and of giving to their furred beauty your nectar-loving tongue. But also, your tongue should have been practising the cold of a slippery, frog-filled pond. Go down on your elbows and knees. You’ll need a spieliologist’s desire for rebirth and a miner’s paranoia of gases — but try to find within yourself the scent of a bat-loving flower. Read books on pogroms. Never trust an owl. Its face is the biography of propaganda. Never trust a hawk. See its solutions in the fur and bones of regurgitated pellets. And have you considered the smoke yet from a moving train? You can start half an hour before sunset, but make sure the journey is long, uninterrupted and that you never discover the faces of those Trans-Siberian exiles. Spend time in the folds of curtains. Seek out boarding-school cloakrooms. Practise the gymnastics of web umbrellas. Are you floating yet, thought-light, without a keel on your breastbone? Then, meditate on your bones as piccolos, on mastering the thermals beyond the tremolo; reverberations beyond the lexical. Become adept at describing the spectacles of the echo — but don’t watch dark clouds passing across the moon. This may lead you to fetishes and cults that worship false gods by lapping up bowls of blood from a tomb. Practise echo-locating aerodromes, stamens. Send out rippling octaves into the fossils of dank caves — then edit these soundtracks with a metronome of dripping rocks, heartbeats and with a continuous, high-scaled wondering about the evolution of your own mind. But look, I must tell you — these instructions are no manual. Months of practice may still only win you appreciation of the acoustical moth, hatred of the hawk and owl. You may need to observe further the floating black host through the hills.