Sunset in the valley,
which is still sometime away

from “official sunset,”
this inland of an earlier

nautical twilight;
but at the fastigium

of the dead central limb
of a York gum

at the southwest corner
of the red shed,

Not frequent, the monitors of doomed pastoral
admit these native moths their autumn rising

after a sleepy eviscerated summer, stubble
suddenly alive with beakiness, and then and then . . .

 

Dawn air bites like a solvent
as crazy kids race ring-necked parrots,

 

the white-faced heron
attempts lift & falters

But their science is flawed—it’s Autumn
now and the rains have yet to come

There is a lull, as if the storm, transfixed over the city,
contemplates its course. I am possessed