I thought of you the other night,
walking in the hills late, later than usual,
the moon only a day or two from full.
How it was full the night you arrived,
which is something you seem to plan, saying:
-Next full moon I'll be in Torres Strait,
Po. Box Thursday Island.
I've been meaning to write.
The rest of the
naked ladies
finally came up,
dozens of them, waving their pink heads in the fog.
Only the one, poking through the dirt when you left,
is a stalk now with a shrivelled head.
They do look garish so late in the summer,
like Rockettes in a dusty frontier town.
But you see, none of it really fits quite right,
the pieces I find or that come round, unbidden.
I had wanted badly to get in that part,
the
wag from the western suburbs,
your momma's fluttering hands and the trip in
with Grandma on Sunday, the two hours by train
and tram all the way to over near Bondi
for black bread and smelly salami ...
The bits we choose to keep and what leave out–
these absences take on a life themselves.
STEPHEN SANDY
Value Added
No one knew what the stones like squatting frogs
Signified. There they were, fuming in rows, out
Of the ground; every cri tic had his explanation
Or hers. But-we had to remember-they
