Kris Hemensley

to come away with Hesiod and leave the rock as though to rocks the tree to trees and dwell on other things imagine the injunction to leave the mint to its own devices among the dust & stones in the shadow of rocks or tree-roots hard as rocks imagine poems left to their own devices as poets gorge on air & airy thoughts & figures – the thought sobers me to the bone of a sobriety earned at the expense of the airiness Hesiod was commissioned to name but who wouldnt seize a staff of bay or ash or gum and trade common or garden cough for lungsfull of song taking the world in one’s stride careering towards heaven?

when I’m braced for a mugging is stranger than the Eritrean boy asking the question outside Clifton Hill station. The skinnier for baggies he’s hop & a skip across three lanes following my hand. No way to countermand him. No way he’d stay for the whole story. The ghosts of spray-can gangs who tagged the length & breadth of the subway are benign I’d tell him. There’ll be the odd gutter-crawler in front of the House of Love. Keep walking. The garage’ll be closed but in summertime a gaggle of mechanics will punt a football in the road there. One missing his mark is bound to call an Eritrean to kick it back. Ignore them. Continue to a far flung franchise of the American dream. Once it was the dull red brick of the United Kingdom pub where the last of the blessed aged quicker than most on Victoria Bitter. Now it’s the McDonalds of this convergence of worlds in whose vicinity I’m more or less lost.

(i) (for Robert Grey) caged by dappled light unlike Rilke’s beast     content this side of heaven (ii) perennial green ephemeral butterfly what time’s time enough? (iii) red roof in full leaf sail now grey threatening sky cry blue land ahoy! (iv) in this green waiting birds trill leaves quiver then time interjects its train!