Spotted Gum
In general, none of the things with a given natural property can be trained to acquire another. Aristotle Ethics Book 2, Ch. 1
While I’m sitting at the kitchen table, she comes bustling
through the doorway, squawking at my feet.
Pushed her away again. Reluctantly I follow her,
sit down to supervise, while she re-joins him at the bowl.
Like children, the rainbow lorikeets are well behaved—
while watched. Wild, but fearless for they know
I’m under their control, they brush their beaks and breasts
against my hand, plunge heads into the jar in haste to get the grain.
Distracted by a thought, I turn my head. With a shriek
and sideways thrust of claw he pushes her aside.
I take away their bowl. They stand quiet, stretched tall,
their bodies bent like question marks, heads to one side.
The bowl placed back again they eat, to all appearance
amicably—for now. I ask myself, what trickery
led me into this tangled triangle? Fool that I am,
why not admit they’ll never change their nature?
But reason flees when beauty dazzles.
I should have learned from Aristotle when he pointed out
no matter how much trained with countless upward throws,
a stone, true to its nature, always falls when dropped.
(Quadrant)
Many international visitors came
to the mathematics department on study leave the secretary told me of one...
They are here in hundreds of thousands
padlocks with names inscribed or printed bold in light-fast ink. We imagine couples pledging...
Saying goodbye at the train on his last visit to Brisbane
I remember my father fixing me with steely eyes, as if he were...
Frequently I pause at a regenerating patch of bushland seeded
with surface soil from a not far distant forest and guess at the identity...
first I saw the dog then the form of a man threading its way noiselessly through the close-packed forest of gym machines...
The tub in our shared bathroom would have a waterline rim of grease and flakes of black skin if he bathed before me...
Enveloped tightly in food
mingled with indigestible sand.
Eat, the only way to move...
In general, none of the things with a given natural property can be trained to acquire another. Aristotle Ethics Book 2, Ch. 1
While I’m sitting at the kitchen table, she comes bustling through...
The sky is always dark and heavy as a stone, the streetscape is unlit,
inhabitants, it seems, have no desire
to have it any other way;
Were I buried unconscious,
face downward, on waking I
would think the sky below me,
for normally people are
buried with respect, face up...
While we supped the soup, my mind was wandering as usual, only fragments of conversation catching my attention...
Body still, tense, only his
eyes danced with the fly until
it paused. Too fast to follow,
his cupped hand swept like a swift