an afternoon, airborne

an afternoon, airborne

that rambling asphalt artery never met you

its pawprinted footpaths never touched your feet

nor did the pair of blue hang gliders scudding

as the crow flies, to a bower by a river

a rope swing with a shrine to a headlong diver

glide pin high for a time with your paltry flesh –

they were outright losers in the fickle index

of the heart, beautiful jolts you couldn’t adjust to

spoilt by a perceptual double standard –

sweeping difference hums with the knell of the sacred

but minor difference heralds a fatal skew

in the world, the crooked stain of a monster

a menace –

you walked on.

croquet club iron gates lachrymose with rust

the only boarded-up bank in Melbourne metro

suitcase piles on blessed op shop stoops

bald men’s heads speckled with coral spots –

sudden inclines beguiling your untrained stomach

at bottom, women brightened by airborne leaves –

Italian social club flanked by plinths with busts

of certain saints you’d never know why they chose

street crossings too wide for the time it took to cross

cars that kept on going in spite of you – acorns

that kept falling – your face a debutante at a ball of suns

spider webs strung between streetlights and marooned trees –

the hawk of a foreign dialect and good perfume

blew as you looked to the parking lots behind

businesses gnomically solvent, and behind them

the crème de la crème of outer suburban zoning

factories boxed in Lego lots with pretty eaves

next to hollow houses, a supersized sign writer’s dream –

sidelong and sweating

you walked on –

opposite a store selling home wares and Polish coffee

the yews in a cemetery whispered that you weren’t still

before you did halt to pick up a piece of scrap metal

that looked like the scuffed fuselage of an old warplane

the size of a model but worn as though flown in combat

and the cold in the air seemed to come out of hiding like tears –

amulet in hand, you fell back into motion for hours

until from nowhere a place appeared, already in your index –

a sprawling tennis centre landlocked between spastic highways

where on the windows of the little pro shop

you met yourself for the first time –

how the tracksuit zipper’s placement could transform your being

what your long hair did after hours of shaking around

how wide were your calves, how tanned your forearm skin

what the other ten year old boys wore under their shorts

the badges of excellence embroidered on your sleeves –

ripple of your name on the glass as it rang from the speakers –

where on the thirty courts you learned what competition was

to a life – where you cheated and swore and threw your racquet

and won trophies and plaques and ribbons and even airline tickets

where your parents called you the best because you were

and the smell of the synthetic grass sand, freshly cracked cans

of balls, sports drink, titanium, restringing machine grease

and rebound netting were your chorus, handing you

triumph and mourning in a single swallowable package –

without that chorus a win, a loss would have seemed

as bizarre a notion as warmth on an unfamiliar street did then

walking through the time lapse of floodlit rows

paw prints in the sand, a poodle ahead, the sky pale and empty

as skies often looked on the morning of long-haul flights.