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Palimpsest Between Walls

In the upper case,
a volume the colour of
late‑harvest light,
its spine breathing
salt and iron.

I keep it ajar —
not for dust,
but so the mapped water
can run beside
my own small channel,
each bend marked
in a hand I almost know.

Through the plaster,
a swell of brass‑warm air —
someone’s breath
caught in a long note,
turning the room
I sat in to water.

I did not rise,
only let the sound
find its own shelf
between the maps,
where it could lean
against a memory
I had not yet
admitted was mine.

Between the first assent
and the last,
a pressed leaf holds
streets I never walked;
in the hollow
where a page was long gone,
I’ve set a three‑part hinge:
motion, tether,
threshold.

It waits there,
not as trophy,
but as one more
voice in the palimpsest —
leaning into
the window I still
leave unlatched.

.

Until the Duvet is Folded

( after CG Thomas' "As I Lay Dying" )

I rest in the breath of wild thyme,
late warmth carrying a brio of wallabies
slipping between trunk and shadow.
                    A duvet settles over me,
           its seams brushed with wattle dust,
the slow dissolve of aniseed toffee on my tongue,
linen on the line lifting in the afternoon drift.

                              I linger, hearing bees
trace loose spirals through tea‑tree and grevillea,
the ring of my father’s axe on the woodblock,
my mother’s voice spilling from the kitchen —
                flathead spitting in the pan,
condensed milk thickening in its tin.
The ground beneath me eases,
soft as sand after rain.

I watch the sky unroll its pale cloth,
clouds loosening toward the far hills.
I remember a cake bright with sherbet lemons,
tin kangaroos wound and hopping,
friends whose names still bloom in my mouth.
Back then, no thought of what might follow —
         only the clear window of youth,
       edges now dimmed.

I dream the meadow into its first dawn:
river tumbling over stone,
wallabies hidden in their burrows,
duvet now folded and set aside.
             In that last quiet,
     I choose love over ambition.
                 The air keeps it for me.

.

Foment in the Firmament
(after )

There is a stirring above the stillness,
a slow‑brewed unrest
braiding itself into the blue.

Cloud‑veins thicken,
their edges bruised with light,
and the air tastes of iron and distance.

Somewhere, a wind rehearses its entrance,
curling through the rafters of the sky,
its breath warm with the scent of rain not yet born.

Birds wheel lower,
their wings cutting arcs in the charged flush,
as if tracing the script of what is coming.

The sun, half‑veiled,
becomes a coin passed from palm to palm
in a game no one admits to playing.

And I stand beneath it all,
feeling the pulse of that high conspiracy —
the foment in the firmament —
gathering its syllables,
ready to speak in thunder.

.