Kicked like a football over the edge of heaven,

you landed with a thud on the slimy night-time stones of a Melbourne alleyway,

just behind the Paris end of Collins St,

and cried “Herald!”

 

       But soft, Florence. Adagio.

       It’s like spying on a small creature

       hiding

       in the crevice of a tree.

       And all you see

       is eyes.

      Take a soft brush, Florence. A soft brush, when you draw out

      the crystal of his soul

      and hold it up to the light.

 

Perhaps, dear boy, in the stillness of this sitting,

you remember

you once shone like a round, bright moon,

loved by a woman whose whole world

she held in her hands

when she bent to kiss your soft, soft cheeks.

 

Or perhaps you eye the sunlight that lingers on the cat,

by name, Oliver,

curled up on his own red velvet cushion,

his soft cat-snores, a regular rise and fall of belonging.

 

Florence, quick! Allegro. The tide is rising and he cannot swim.

Swift strokes, Florence. Allegro!

A square brush.

A ballast for the soft round of his cheek held to the light

and for the strong white vertical and noose

of his rough neck comforter.

Allegro, Florence! Allegro! He can not swim!

 

      And now. One last touch. The last Adagio.

      A soft brush, Florence. Lente. Lente.

      His sad eye averted, like pensive pools,

      and his lips,

      so tender.

 

O, dear boy, I would take your cheeks between my palms

and kiss, kiss, kiss away your sadness.

You are too young for grief and loss, and the cold jagged streets of night-time

predators.

 

Where do you go when the show is over?

 

You still cannot read the news you spruik?

         The moon is lost, believed drowned.

         She was spotted last night, directly above the Treasury,

         whining and wailing for want of a bed.

 

         Theatre-goers heading for home at close of show

         saw her make a desperate dash across the sky,

         leap off the edge of a cloud

         and land somewhere near the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth.

 

         Mrs Maloney of Wagga Wagga, staying overnight to visit her Uncle Joe in

         town,

         swore she saw the moon sneak past Reception at the Federal Hotel,

         mumbling something

         about room for a moon in a broom cupboard.

 

In a broiling Melbourne sky, bumped and battered by bellicose clouds,

the moon flailed and swallowed water

above a gold-dust city

that rose and fell

with the gentle sough and sigh

of rest and satiety.

Her compass, everything she’d ever believed

about the correct placement

of heavenly bodies in the universe,

had long fallen from her open hand.

 

As the paper boy pressed himself

into an alcove of the bakery at the top of Collins St,

away from the wind,

he saw the moon fall like a broken swan,

stark white

against a flat black sky.

​

Silver threads of song surged from her throat. They spun glittering arabesques

above a town that rolled over and drew its coverlets

over its eyes and over its ears.

The moon sang of light and shade,

and of the myriad tears that glistened like fragile pearls

along the crust of the earth,

precarious in its pivot on millennia of disappointment, always believing

that the next spin

            and the next

                       and the next

​

will bring about

a new day.

 

 

Covering himself with newspaper to keep himself warm,

the boy watched rolling clouds drive a linear path towards the moon.

They encircled her, engulfed her, turned her inside out and muzzled her.

Then they swept the moon clean out of the sky,

like an errant page of your newspaper

hustled off the road by the wind.