Moreton Bay

David Eggleton

New Zealand

When it’s stinking hot at twelve o’clock,
earthy aromas rise and vent.
Something’s conjured in a gutbucket
and tossed bloodily in a wok
to quarrel with a guzzle of noodles.
Somewhere, someone faces the chop,
gets the elbow, and, down in the mouth,
thumbs the nose like a clothes peg.
The pineapple factory clanks;
a rock melon’s guts ferment,
spilled on grease-trap spikes.
Op shop fabrics swelter.
Crow’s caw lays down the law.
Fibrolite freedoms let draughts in.
A tin roof’s holed like a colander,
shotgunned with sun’s dust.
Shacktown’s galvanised iron creaks
beneath clatter of fangs, claws, beaks.
Pelicans roost on rusty bridge posts.
Moreton Bay fig-trees engage
in elephantine creep.
Against crinkle-eyed seawater,
freckled knuckles row a dinghy out.
Still as a lizard, a man fishes
at evening for a plume of white stars
to answer the day’s long thirst.