Called to mind this part of my Australia notebook:
Sculling clubs upon Yarra.
All-girl crews in blue-and-white jerseys the cox in red and on a bike path
a coach with a bullhorn “square your shoulders, girls.”
All manner of birds not known–this one
the size of a small pigeon
white underside black back and a black
bib the rest pied feeds on the bank the beck
of bug and worm, the look of a bug and worm eater.
I make it fly so as to see
that its wings are striped white. Elegant
small black legs black eyes. Right next to me it grabs a worm
and swallows. A magpie
lark. Hark
hark.
Knees to chest the breast
flattened, vulva
presented. “And
stroke!”
Make a muddy track
by the river.
Presuppose that it’s dusk
and cloudy
on the cusp of Spring,
the city all around us.
Black swans with red beaks, a horizontal band of white
at the tip.
They feed on grasses.
Mark
At 07:52 PM 11/26/2003 +1100, cooee wrote:
> November 2003, Warrandyte
>
>Spring afternoons by the river
>(where once the Yarra
>yielded gold, it now offers bush tracks),
>you see more walkers than joggers,
>more dogs than humans leash-tangling
>affable tail-waggers.
>
>Spring floods surge
>shadowed under the bridge:
>the current tests the ducks.
>Rare is the dog that trusts itself to the flow.
>Watch that big lab whatever its master flings,
>in dives the dog, brings
>it back, swings
>wetly up the bank, barks for more.
>
>Spring afternoons by the river
>thirty years (half a lifetime) back,
>I was the one
>trusting body to the flow,
>cautious always, being really no
>swimmer, but submitting
>thrilled to the surge to the rapids,
>slip through the gap in the rocks,
>dawdle then in the shallow
>where a sheltered beach had formed
>and the daylong sun kept the water warmed.
>
>Stolid now we pace the bank path:
>off-leash time for dog and me,
>cautious always; water
>beckoning with its old spring glitter.
>
>Max Richards, Melbourne
>7.30pm Wednesday 26 November 2003
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