it nearly gave way
– the in-ground trampoline
when with my hands
I turned your head, weightless
with willing, like
an orb of dew encased in curls and skin
towards a distant
mob of kangaroos, your first
and you leapt and
your English flew off in the sparks –
when with my hands
I held onto the springs
after falling, and
morning reigned so kingly in my stomach –
who was it then
that covered your eyes
sick and sat you
spinning beneath the sunrise
a molten
marshmallow oozing over a rockslide –
was the cardboard
waxed – my French too crude to ask
but what you
smelt, what you tasted folded through my thoughts
like the whitest
meringue through fast-deflating dough –
the first of the
barbed wire fences, that’s where the roos
had bounded to
from the high grass in the valley – the valley
that seemed to
stretch, at least, from St Andrews to Eltham
and, your sight
rescued, your share of the world again
unmoving, they
looked at you, all seven Big Reds –
nonplussed, as
though you’d asked a difficult question of them
and you looked
back, fingernails scraping the heavy nylon, and shook –
meantime, Sean
killed the turntables for dawn
and after a moment
of screeching static, the speakers too –
only the fires,
loud and lambent in their oil drums
and the birds and
the far-off rustle of Yarra rapids
and the ringing of
ears could be heard – but how would you have known?
now cross-legged,
a well-fed and gorgeous yogi
un-ironed clothes
so windless as to look like warped plastic
your mouth so
agape you couldn’t help but yawn –
half in terror,
half in thrall – how would you have known
about anything at all except that light-
refracting animism
– union of souls, let’s say –
and how could you
go back to Europe now?
could you be
anywhere but where the roos are and call it living?
It’s not a
question you’ll ever ask yourself.
But, asleep in the
car as it teases out the hills, I could swear
you flinched when
I said, as if to a piece of silk gauze on a
spurting wound
you can’t go.
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