Ruby Street

I have just come back up the road from three days of a poetry festival at Goolwa, a town at the mouth of the Murray. On the drive back, cows crowding in fields, in black and white (friesians?). A flock of galahs circling the hillside and the dam. Calves, lambs, small horses. Vines in autumn modes. Dangerous drivers on holiday Monday. As part of the festival’s closing Lionel Fogarty reminded us that English is not the original language of this place, that there’s a sense all English is obscene here. He reminded us it was a white festival. Goolwa and Hindmarsh Island, of course, are contested places. I took some time of from the poeting. Saw the mouth of the Murray, the breakers of the southern ocean, the many flocks of birds. Walked on the Goolwa barrage, watched the dredging. The huge problems of water and country, and the failure of policy and practice. The festival raised and confirmed a number of things for me - positives and other. I got the impression this was the case for some ...

The parrot hangs down from the bottlebrush, everywhere there’s leftovers from storm. The rain needs no actual photo, you smell its rare, pleasant odour on the town’s skin. There’s the awkward bow to music you must not make. There’s no midpoint, only angles between streets, sightlines along garden paths to hidden yards where citizens have no need today to sneak water from the failing wells.

How clear is the night air, its wings are corner of the eye stuff, falling, primordial, as you talk to yourself, why did we part, friend, when did the dust come? Be careful, do not walk home alone, but where do you belong? Backwards and forwards through time, in what’s lost, weather patterns won’t leave me alone. We need to see the photographs before we choke on flowers, on flames, quartzite energies. What is wrong with the elements, who has locked the door, what is that rain, is it ancient or televisual? Drowning in the air you need a drink.

thinking about green liquidity, comfort scarcity, one foot following the others into the common and ancient pool ferny footholds the kids slide leaf lichen yellow light splashing on signs of life - Ohau Falls

a globe of water clear fruit, dirty fruit water that is water you never get a circle, not a question