the other holograph

through the violet smoke the fireworks leave behind

after they have capered and made shapes beneath the clouds

there appears the haunting holograph of a man

and silence and uproar partitions another crowd –

why the gas meters in every Melbourne garden

intone the urgent whining of a stove jacked up too high

why the feral possums in every Melbourne tree

seem to be holding a conclave on the powerlines

why someone has painted the post box green as a forest

widened the slot for bulky items to a yawning gape

why the indigenous name of the parkland the people skirt

feels physical now, made of rubber or powdered latex

leaps free of the sign like the man from midnight’s ether –

moustache white as icing and low glasses small and round

moustache growing wilder as the smoke diffuses

all true – the hundred aliases with which he’s endowed –  

and cavorts in the loaded air, there is no because - 

no more than a mist fanned out across the leaden black rise

first footfall soft on the wet grass, scarcely heard

firework shells left scattered, the other holograph subsides.