Who can resist a didgeridoo
in the middle of Queen St – not one, but three
from the Northern Territory,
each one more deeply, eucalyptically rude?
For the builders have lost the passers-by
who are drawn like water to the swirl and squelch,
the monstrous plumbing of his breath,
sucked in and further, and then atomised,
breathed out in stiff shirts and office skirts
but feeling looser.…
A wasp photographer
snaps the man from all angles for something sweet
and the women, who sweat at his embouchure,
grow broad as rivers to his narrow lips,
dirty as deltas, with silting hips
and alluvial bosoms. The men, unsure,
cower behind their totem wives,
puny and trouty; now chimpanzees
swing through the scaffolding with ease
and screech with the newly arrived macaws;
cranes buck and bow and the wooden thrum
makes men recall a biography
of sludge and savannah, how it was when the sky
arched its blue back and started to come.