In her wide-open sanctuary
a female sun moth’s yellow patches are hard to spot
as she lies against grasses allowed to fend for themselves
in baking-paper paddocks, you and I circling
their deliberate rendition, these hardly promising
‘coarsely vesicular, minor interbedded silty sand and baked soils’
of the city’s far western edge, under a gathered sky,
solar ringbolt at its centre. Even herons heading for the wetlands
seem to give this place a wide berth.
Everything lies low:
tumbleweed mustard, daisy, details of the plain’s wider story,
stellar scumble of oxalis.
It would be easy, I suppose, to hold a suburb in contempt
thrown together in its sameness
but a woman in a brilliant sari is taking her grandchild to a playground
where New Holland honeyeaters are comparing their tiny golden epaulettes.
Note:
The sixth line (in italics) has been sourced from: Vandenberg AHM, 1974, ‘Melbourne: Geological Survey of Victoria’, Mines Department Melbourne Victoria. Link to article.
