what if everything in his world that matters
were colorless, empty, gone
like the wooden synagogues of Poland,
everything - the Victorian schoolhouse,
its airy unfair cage of gerbils; the 5
&
10
where he buys his models; his sister,
his sister waiting for him now on the front steps;
the houseplant his mother named for him yesterday
while she watered it - "begonia" - its pink £lowers
in the front window beside the gray cat
watching for him, too, planted there,
we think, since morning, since he left for school -
reliable, wily;
and his room upstairs,
his Marvel cornics, his painted bookcase,
the plastic dinosaurs lined up on its shelves
like disguised lead soldiers - the fierce
triceratops, the mastodon, the inchling
woolly mammoth - replicas he loves from the set
his grandfather
May his soul rest in peace
sent him last year ...
LES MURRAY
Kimberley Brief
With modern transport, everywhere you go
the whole world is an archipelago,
each place an island in a void of travel.
In our case, cloud obscured the continent's whole gravel
of infinite dot-painting, as we overflew zones and degrees
toward the great island of the Kimberleys.
It
was dusk when we slanted into Broome
to be checked in, each with a bungalow for a room.
