REVISITING CLOUDSTREET

The Lambs and the Pickles

thick pressed together
through words fired down
like the hoof strike
of a lucky horse
racing to the finish line.

New breath takes up
the old vernacular
in the style of a yarn
with a question at its heart.

How do you stand
before the hairy hand of god?

Set up shop with a proddy work ethic
despite the agnostic fog in your head,
sell fruit and veg and icecreams
as your Fish boy bubbles and coos
for the water, the water.

Or knock back piss, next door,
and ponder the vast mysteries,
sniffing fortune on the breeze
with your ghost fingers itching
despite their long ago mangling.

And the light, oh that glorious light,
that luminous promised land,
isn't shining in the clear sky above.
It's deep down in the water
and on the other side of a final gasp.

There it all is, side by side,
the melancholic bite of the past
and the making do of the present,
age and light filled promise
and the exotic flourish
of an obstinant talking pig.

There it all is revisited:
strange and familiar and resonant,
the suburban myth called Cloudstreet
that we all want to purchase.

Onya Tim.