Where the bees rest where the butterflies play
“What we most need to do is to hear within us
the sounds of the earth crying..."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
from October the trees are all betrothed each
to the gardener in nets white gauze
figs peaches sequestered from the busy beaks
and teeth of bats and birds
the day sultry as a girl in her slip swimming
waiting on the Southerly Buster
cicadas heat from the city a brown bubble popped
by flat-iron cloud-banks
high and sharp as the beaked head of a kookaburra
tall sky and
gratefully I'm small
up the hill
march the white
agapanthus forcing genetic breaks
onto our purple beauties scrambling the misty blues
to hybrids there is no
one garden in my street
I see the Ice flower
nipped out on a beach walk mini red-fringed suns
succulents rescued from places where old age gave way
to builders' aspirations pieces of old friends
the Mentone red geranium that Gaagang saw from his pram
Hoya from the balcony back at the flat the boys had
in Drummoyne your tree
a pencil planted just before
you died
begonias like Mum's pelargonium from The Redemptorists
a fine piece of Menken's building lotus out of farm dams
mingle a floral beer garden with tin peacocks
and galahs turmeric galangal Vietnamese mint
vanilla orchid mustard greens
are you hungry thinking how to mow around
the condiments and if you've ever seen a chicory flower
mauve and delicate as tissue
I see a garden built by birds by bats
bullrushes
flown in yonder from Ash Island
White Cedar loquat air mail
in a sweep of feathers
the odd drop of oyster shells
beside the Jizo statue
bark depends from gum tree piling around roots
mandarin and finger lime lemons parsley
all engrossed with weed with blue tongues
pushing up in pots in tubs in cisterns
anywhere
these tiny hair-drawn feet
can tread
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