Mark of the Day - Australian Rules Football Watching him go up the sky, as if he held some secret toe-holds in the crowd-rung air. Long fingers, stretching into all the grey and difficult distance - glistening, robed with rings of rain and silver light. He knows his own degrees. Less than a go-between for gods, nevertheless - were this the very Port of Mars, this warrior rises, risking all our soft Saturday fears of losing; more than a match. He flies for all of us, clutching at the sun - way out of reach. But catching any piece of sky isn't enough, what counts is still the worth of what he does with it, back here on earth. 23 |
Adelaide An early morning rower dips his oars in gold but the ripples spread and slap in small black hollows along the green fringed tidy bank. The river is dammed - the old worn profile of a lie where children fish for their faces in the green weir's silence Tended parklands are a carved ornate frame that fixes a pretty canvas: in the gallery - a chamber of horrors and city walls hang more than pictures. Lovers in the strip shade of palms in smooth curve and dips of clover lie on flat files of unsolved crime - buried bits of bone between their lips. There is a tattoo on the parade ground. the overblown exercise of toy soldiers strutting into children's eyes who afterwards ask to touch the guns. The Union Jack waves Government House: beneath the fallen leaves dead drunk a young man drinks its blended colours from a long brown paper bag. The cold cramped floor of the Cathedral crawls down postcard steps and slips into the sunbaked street where a woman scans newspaper 'Births and Deaths'. Behind her rustic garden seat. Plane trees are keeping something back - death lurks beneath a blade of grass and tonight's top TV news - about to happen. 8 |
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