I walked the ramparts of five acres
and internal spirits erupted: dug out
of clotted soil at intervals, tufts
of ground cover upturned: cascades
of colours against my bland circulations,
amorphous sexuality of plants
confused by a prevalence of yellow
wattle blossoms: heady, disorientating,
forcing my glance upwards
where clearly through deep blue skies
I could see the format of constellations,
far more vividly than darkness,
highlights of blinding light: meteor trains
furrowing like ploughs or air seeders
blasting the crop in with early emergent
suppressors stopping the birth of new stars
the now rapidly slowing expansion; and so,
thinking over the eminent city
where wind funnels streets of skyscrapers
and crosstown traffics in gravity and motion,
citizens and aliens hurrying to boltholes,
subway injections and trash-dispensing galleries
filling New Jersey with goo and feedback,
vibrations of fire-escapes and rivermist;
and so this haunted entanglement,
rapture of fox and rabbit, mob of horses
roaming the district, coming through
the erasure of fence, cutting up ground,
shitting near saplings, is the energy
driving the treadmill of my head’s city;
torn apart by the biomechanics of gender,
resolutely indecisive, I guided my steps
against the cruelty of neighbours and burrs,
the tears of New York and its liberty;
why am I drawn to my publisher’s office
to talk the success or failure of sheoaks
and spitfires edging the driveway?
Tim carries his three-year-and-four-month-old
American passport up towards the jam tree
heavy with ants feeding on scale insects’
honey dew, lovingly and protectively tended,
like the nation he is of but doesn’t belong to,
nationless on five acres; I tend this abyss,
I tend the places spirits emerge, land, pirouette
like smoke and différance…