The yellow Volkswagen
by the blue green sea
has someone in the back—
they’re fast asleep,
dreaming of the Japanese
order of things.
The sea has a dark green ring
where the horizon starts
like the outer edge of the eyes
and after the horizon, when it’s dark,
like the pupil at the centre of the eye,
stars will appear, furthering the air,
expanding space, a minimal
comfort in the van, with the woman
asleep, the side door open
dreaming of the light
which doesn’t need dark,
a light that has always been there.
Too long awake
and you crave the dark
the dark which can’t be disturbed
or dismissed as something bad
people want; and the dog
on the chain
by the corrugated fence,
rattles his links
from the poll the mallet
has put in the ground.
Has knocked his water
bowl upside down.
He can’t find shade,
his owner isn’t home.
The dog pants hot,
is about to give up,
one more lunge
and his collar comes off
and he’s over the fence
and onto the road
and off down the street
to the stormwater drain
where the girl is
snoring on her back.
The stars are there
so an I exists.
On closer inspection,
your waking face
has the same horizon
in the blackness of space,
the curves, the colours,
dramatic sense
in the bright lit
comedy/horror
of patents pending
for weather control,
the atmosphere conditioned.
The crack cannot
describe the glass.
There is high end
order to the chaos cast
in the patterns of light
caught in the fleeing drops
as the dog shakes dry;
if you go down
upon your knees,
and look in close
at a spec on the grass,
the size of that field
and the fields of stars;
Galaxies cluster
like grapes on a vine,
and the big vast nothing
between things, Time.
Yes, she knows,
waking in noise
the crack cannot
exist without form.
The separation,
is where
Time comes from,
she says, mysteriously
dramatically, alive
to this, waking
at the cracking sound
of a dog’s head chasing
her salami around.
He is caught in the bag
with the bread and cheese
the cask of wine
the strudel slices
it could be a crisis
as he runs in blindness
onto the road
by the carpark under the pines.
And the risk is now, with these
characters down, the loose
dog free, (coaxed with meat)
a travellers’ van,
the chain on the pole
with a collar on the ground,
the upside down bowl
with the sun on the steel,
the poet’s task is to take their real
for granted.
The dog dislikes
where he is tied
there’s a beating waiting
with a new tight collar.
And the girl had a dog
who died of old age
the month of her 16th birthday.
She kept his buckled leather.
Will anyone notice, anyone
who matters, see
the girl
leave town
with a dog
on the passenger
side?
And later at the beach,
fishermen, a fire,
the sky going dark
being driven outside
by the waxing moon
to cast the reef
the depth of the black
and the reassuring flames
the horizon fading
and the seaweed crackling
the driftwood melting
in the physics of it all.
Yes, those ancient works ‘attributed’ to India say so much about the first tool of a scientist: the faculty of recognition, and the need to explore first, before any other phenomena, what is providing the experience of ‘universe’
Awesome reflections as ever Dean, you always have lovely splashes of sea and earth colours in your writings. I very struck by:
Galaxies cluster
like grapes on a vine,
and the big vast nothing
between things, Time.
Yes, she knows,
waking in noise
the crack cannot
exist without form.
The separation,
It brings to mind the words of the (so-called) Diamond Stura, where ‘ Form is emptiness, and emptiness’ is form’ those concepts ‘form’ and ’emptiness’ only existing in contrast to each other, and that form, by it’s very nature, lacks an enduring presence, and emptiness is conveyed to us only through the existence of non-permanent forms…something like that away … 🙂