These Flying Islands

 

Acoustemology

                             for J.L. (and Necks fans everywhere)

Looking out into a forest of flowering Pink Bloodwoods
and peeling Blackbutts, I hear Vertigo for the first time.

Two decades after Sex the usual groove is bushwhacked
by a tinker’s percussion and electronics out of the blue,
cicadas work an industrial background accompanied
by woodwind from the Miners, a piping King Parrot and
Lorikeets improvising avant-garde, high-register shrieks.

Then, through the cover of trees, the neighbours join in.
Norm is drilling metal, forcing a basketball hoop onto the frame
of his hand-made palm house assembled from scaffolding.
In the west, Graeme is on his chainsaw demolishing
a bamboo forest planted by the previous owners.

The origins of cosmic music are not always attributable.
Tomorrow, I will go down to the estuary at first light and listen.