the tar-pit wasn't of much interest to me. the falling, of course, was real.
mother's milk wasn't of much interest to me. the seething kid was real.
the herd wasn't of much interest to me. the enclosures, of course, were real.
the haunt of jackals. the thirsty ground. the churning cream. the bottle of tears.
his age wasn't of much interest to me. his transparency was real.

I begin at night. I paint my skin and the hairs of my body and of my head. Now the sun is rising and bright hairs fall, flakes of skin fall all around me as a glittering dome. Now I have their eyes they come in and they are an audience. The sun is rising. It is midday and the head throbs. So they are pressing on the fence. They are spilling into an air zone. Now I name the secretions of my rivals. This one bleeds. This one's nose dribbles as he cries. They will be devoured. The sun is rising. Flakes of skin fall from the rising body. The clamour is an open breath and it casts a shadow. The body shines. 

as a kid I could imagine the end of the world as watching stars go out. not trying to decide what to serve for the first birthday party while watching fictional radiation sickness on tv while clicking away from the map of the oozing red globe on the herald front page. what have I learned? that ending is a fantasy but irrevocable loss is real. that I can write about it think about it feel sick and then forget. 

my mum gave us this picture book by a swedish behavioural scientist which is supposed to put the baby to sleep, and I gave it back. the rabbit is drawn in coloured pencil and he looks unwell, like someone who's been smoking a dozen cones a day since 2004 but hasn't slept since deciding to quit on tuesday after breaking a rib coughing. the book warns you off reading the book to someone who's driving, then the rabbit's mum takes him on a long journey to see uncle yawn. well, I'm sorry about uncles, but in the sense of general regret, not personal responsibility. my memory of being hypnotised in 1988 by bert potter the communist free-love therapist who turned out to be a paedophile is surprisingly clear. there were a hundred people in the room and nothing happened except sun coming in through the trees and the big bay windows onto the cushions and the groups of quiet cuddled up people, and bert talking slowly about a beach and the water line and a stone and a box. I feed my son to sleep, and sometimes when he doesn't sleep we just go out into the back yard and talk to cockatoos or look for the moon. I don't know if that's the right thing to do or not but it works okay. 

why, when I catch the bus, do I share it with old women and not with old men? are the old men still asleep or are they already at the shops? did they walk? did they drive? one of my grandfathers would only walk into town, walk from balmoral to the city and back again in three hours. when he died of a heart attack fishing on the rocks, the doctor refused to go down to the beach, and the men who found him had to carry him up to the road. once I dreamed I carried him on my back through a desert. because he was dead he could no longer walk. I am not sure, in a heart attack, if the heart attacks or is attacked, and if it attack-fishes or is its own end in war but still quietly with the tide, and perhaps the bus's old men are already dead. or perhaps they are driving regardless, like my other grandfather, who nearly died when, functionally blind with glaucoma, he drove into a sheep, and who nearly died when his ride-on mower rolled over on top of him at the bottom of a slope where very long grass kept on growing. 

it's a cool day. gum trees turn liquid in the air above the roof. leaves dangle as though they are in water. leaves blink on and off. branches hold their place. this cloud bank holds its place, a form reaching back, stillness being the one you want to return to. his hands, his kiss. this cloud expanding upon you, and holding its form. we still call this summer. you put your backpack on. you check the sky and leave the house. from the bus stop the mountains are blinking on and off. we will call each other today, holding the phones up to our ears. and breathe, ready to speak, looking up.

they say her husband is marvellous, he's done a terrific job of looking after her through it all, though he does like to tease: that the directions she gave us to the lunch might as well have gone through launceston, that it was curious she didn't bring out all the biscuits. that the tale of a lost chain-watch really began when she leaned over a bridge above a river and fiddled with the chain - unfortunately for the young man who dove in to retrieve it, and saved it after all, the little watch soaked but still ticking. the memory makes them laugh quite together, bright joy in liquefaction.