out on water, the doubts we keep alive
drown in three hundred and sixty degrees of awe

here is liquid country, expect no trees
but the occasional mast to pierce the sky

silk ripples, satin laps against the boat
but you’ve taken away the substance of today

salt, sand and an artefact I’m not supposed
to mention, you’re not allowed to take them

national parks hate people like you
stuffing a blip, ten blips, behind their smile

holiday of a lifetime and you spoil it
for me, a pillow cloud plays with dreams

the sky pitches a sun at us
we’re full speed ahead into light

wind encourages a swell
the Coolong turns in for another night

if only you could see the future
for the seas

seize nothing but peace
in this cooperative of life

People who think they can mess with my thought
pop up like puppets with eye-splitting speech.
√ Yes, I would like to subscribe to your

Punch the Judy magazine or
latest political tell-it-all screed.
People who think they can mess with my thought

find it appropriate to hug me, their daughter
as though a stab at the right brain, cheers.
√ Yes, I would like to subscribe to your

“Better Dog Society. Read more
facts in articles, less ads, more appeal.”
People who think they can mess with my thought

arrive unannounced, no flowers, no port
of call except my private beach. (Get real).
√ Yes, I would like to subscribe to your

next major thesis: The Theatre of War.
There’s room on the bookshelf for one last scream.
People who think they can mess with my thought.
√ Yes, I would like to subscribe to your

Hurstville Library’s Miles Franklin Room became the setting for The Discovery Writers, a room occupied by curiously shaped tables not designed for writing and chairs…

1. personality
you wear the architecture of elegance
confident, smart, a slim sort of loud
a winning bluff to your bottom line
you will make fashion history, spied
by a fabric designer who’s wrapt in blood
your provocative colour sample, F,
becomes the new red, people
will queue to be photographed on you
and when you blush about this
only I will know

2. reflection
you’re a curvaceous mirror
to our body language
winking us to come
sit down near your legs
feel the worth of your merchandise
freeing us, weightless
but if you were a woman
wearing that look, I’d uncover
your unconscious and say
watch it, the predators are circling

3. enquiry
as chair women
our meeting is perfect match
you zing where I zang
you win many stars for comfort
I could clap your inclusiveness
whatever my temper, you accept me
you keep my feet on the ground
while my head’s gone fiction
but in summer, will you read
my temperature and sit up in blue

4. recognition
my seat of learning
oh little red writing chair
what bright smiles you give
all the better to hearten you, my dear 
oh little red writing chair
what sleek lines you have
all the better to help you write, my dear
oh little red writing chair
what strong support you give
all the better to keep you here, my dear

There are places onshore
where plants reveal themselves on rock,
dank or dry-dock as clouds allow,
expose brute sinew from an underworld
working its passage like men below decks,
this root-rope straining at the breaking edge
to keep its boat of life erect.

There are spaces
above high water, above the drown,
chill with clues of an older maritime
and harbouring history with sandstone gold:
rocks in surges, urgent weathers,
white crests and watermarks still embedded,
honey-comb erosion, no sweet memory.

Fig trees splay over angled rock,
like sailors, aching for a chance on flat land,
deep-seeking an anchor.

at a time, early 1960’s
when material was expensive
but nylon affordable
a time when every ha’penny
counted towards happiness
this blue dressy vision
wrapped up summer
as a stinker

the neckline gripped neck bones
so clamped round the neck
it was hard to believe
breathing was an obligatory fact

puffy-blue sleeves were set into a bodice
set-in with a seam, no give, so modest
those arms weren’t going out anywhere
certainly not in higher social circles

pale-blue lace on half moon collars
pale-blue swathes to cut through the gossip
no darts appeared though the need was apparent
a zipper down the back, Nana had gone modern
fabric flowers at the waist, a miniature spray
nothing ever wasted from her milliner’s table

the whole dress was lined
in something resembling plastic
but how do I know this?
why would I care?

Nana’s hand-sewn dress
was a Sunday success outfit
everywhere it went, people wanted
to finger the finesse of it

I did love the look
and would have loved
to just look at it more often

but I was the model
twelve-year-old granddaughter
sweating
pubescing
inside it

petrified grandeur
perfectly formed remains
that tantalise memory

cut off where it counts
mutilation or benevolence
for the branching arms?

vulnerable as a foetus
nubs of limbs that haunt
our expectations of correctness

lived-once sculpture
the exquisite instrument
that reveres excision

ode to anatomy where
sum of the parts visible
makes gruesome fiction

torsos can sit/stand/loom
twice as high as a human
twice as dead by amputation

what holds them up?
might they fall tonight
for art raiders?

don’t think I’ll ever see a thing
as beauti-fully ugly
as this abandoned tree stump

Measuring lakes was always more than a day
job and he took this job from lake to lake
setting out the laser, settling his camp for
an overnight stay. The silent perk. The soft dollar.
He could rattle off accurate volumes
of major lakes across the country
an expert in the nomenclature of water-birds
but it was the volumes that kept him
coming back, contented.

At any chance to talk with farmers,
the lost-map tourists or locals with children
he’d launch right into his special subject
the totality of tides in captured waters
explaining those lakes with no true tides
where wind does the work of a lazy moon.
Listeners looked him in the eye
returning a strangled smile and nod.
Thank goodness someone understands.

What he could not fathom were fathers
in the well-used ute, under a grey roof sky
manoeuvring their sons straight to the shoreline
the primitive drive to scavenge a weapon
then attempt upon attempt to perfect a skim
throwing the best part, the afternoon away
at a place where water-birds yearly strive
from a scavenge of twigs and insect parts
to protect their young from circling threats.

How can they miss the call of the birds?
Why don’t they ask for some local knowledge?
How many stones to sink a heart?
He measured the week-day attitude of lakes
and found a match with the depth of loneliness
and when he recalled his favourite lake
the deepest depression in all of Australia
a stone skipped ten times
king-hit the horizon.

put a pencil in my mother’s hand
and inevitably we would see squiggles
curious wisps of alternative thinking
never staying on the line, straying
into higher orders of shapes and curves
around the back flaps of envelopes
or squashed between advertisements
her weekly search for the absolute specials
sent us, one by one, through the checkout point
“Limit Two” had no hold on Mum

telephone calls were recorded in clouds
of clumps and humps or seagull’s wings and
if only we had learnt a little shorthand
the riddles of Mother would have been solved
she spoke excellent shorthand—that foreign language
for those considered too dense for the sentence
of tertiary textbooks; too dull, like a grey, wasted day
of continuous cloud, but women mastered shorthand
to one hundred and sixty words a minute
she was offered “Personal Secretary to the Premier”

but didn’t take it, the hours even then were anti-single
my mother’s shorthand: an instrument of torture
to lasso the latest words from the developer
and strangle him slowly, word for word
to trap the agents, and all their fall guys
weren’t they right fools then
weren’t they caught in their own spiel storm
she could have been a court reporter
but again I think it was the hours inside
without sky, shorthand tended to fly off the fingers
seeking its freedom on white-clouds of page
reclining figures gathering finally—in mood cumulus

a beetle hangs trussed in military webbing
three-quarters of a lizard dangles like spoil
ants heave rations, one zone to another
blue fluid splatters target earth

she’d struggled with choice of that townhouse;
south facing, close-country to the enemies
of dampness, darkness and deceit
could people thrive here, she queried,
be satisfied with less,
defeat was no part of her vernacular

along boundaries, an army of palms
held strategic control
tree ferns guarded the southern light
was darkness that sinister?
was shadow to be shunned?

once past the checkpoint
she sensed the flit of rainforest
a wild untroubled cool
revelled in the lesser light
one of Nature’s softer moods

and surely she’d find safety here
beyond the bash of sunshine

Space is arguably there for the takers
but those who miss a vacuum’s significance
the frugal air, the silent highway
trial and error in circular motion.

Approaching the city, traditional spire-line
the artist is flung to an outside edge
forces – centrifugal, missing the centre
physics intent on staying mystic.

Outer-lane space offers quiet seclusion
and artist sets camps for a solid rebriefing.
“This far so fine and can’t complain
the paintings are selling, the sculptures – well

there’s talk of good money, those city cafs
buying up stuff to stay part of culture.
Nudes and I have always done well.
No reason this city can’t clear m’debt.”

Rising to a windscreen of dusty sun
the artist consults with friend of a friend.
“Yeah, the gallery’s ready, I’ll need yr cash.
We won’t set up before ten. It is Sunday.”

Artist parked on a sweeping curve
rejoicing in the freedom of unfamiliar space
oblivious to signs, the abandoned highway
travels a road where danger is a friend.