CROSSING OVER

I had an intimation of this loss
when I was a schoolboy
catching ferries, and I would
watch the crewman coil
the rope that had secured us:
solid shore adrift and all
that churning thrust from
engines firing just below
the deck; pushed out beyond
to drift and turn and make
our river crossing.

We were a murmuring island
wrapt in mist, estranged
from shoreline certainties,
and Charon's presence was
a broken bridge, skeletal
in the white air. The river
kept no memory: our
trail dissolved in all that
moving deep and we lost
sight of every place we'd been;
shrouded by our journey.

SONGLINE

Sometimes, at night,
the Belgrave Lilydale line
sang a dark commuting lullaby;

soft metal murmuring
from Box Hill to Laburnum,
amplifying through the cemetery,
looking to be heard;

awake in the sleeping house,
not naming the consolation I felt,
my first taste of the blues:

the ordinary music of departure.

ENGAGING DARK MATTER

Why should conservatives be
the stalwarts of mythology?
Who gave them the right to choose
who plays the boogeyman?
And who says liberal should be
so insipidly reasonable?
So much spin, no imagination,
no visionary plan.

Straight jacket facades
and not a whisper of a gargoyle;
girdlocked existence with
no dark alleys to escape;
market projections and
scientific extrapolations;
who carves the monster
waiting at our gate?