Silent death
The phone doesnt ring
and one of the southern bights
stone apostles
collapses in the sea
and no-one hears it.
Things are reported about you
and me; our public pronouns no longer
share a line
and in whats said theres nothing
of that breaching whale of stone.
Looking ahead
the cliffs carpal ridge doesnt quite reach the sea
and you have to watch for falling rocks. You dont know
whether to stay close and grip its coarse pores
or to time the wave
and get through.
*
I hear myself saying something like:
like a deft mitt
the sea suppresses the fury
of the things that happen on land.
Now my notes tell me
the birds working the ocean outfall
fallout of the clockface
like leadweights –
sometimes not a sign at all of the descent
but then each added detonation sent up in
pockets of the oceans smokeless powder.
Road-work
Tonight again you hit road-work
the night luminous with gangs
the clarity of signs. Each new lane
sanctioned
by lime-green
banded labourers
requesting at points
this cabin of thought
expire in a queue.
Radios hush up.
Not far from a frozen engine
cold feet wait for the sign to turn..
A cigarette burns audibly
on the dashboard
the desk beside you..
as the sign turns
telling you slow
in the night of portable chrome
carefully over his elegant velour
and the night smells faintly like
the powder of nervous brake-shoes
and you sneeze because of the dust or more accurately
the hydrocarbon coming off
his new surface
then accelerate away
as the light in your rear-vision
recedes and dies and you find yourself
being brought along almost beautifully
now in the slipstream the stillfold
of the road-train
you encountered earlier
taking in its body-roll
as it sways three trailers
through a curving arrow
north of karuah
and with an indicator
signals you to pass
that the road is clear
as you move cautiously out
into the future you cannot see
on a screen