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This is Draft Two of a poem about my last week in Broome Camp School. Feel free to comment ... It will lose format, so let me tell you the first verse is staggered line at margin/line in, and the section headings with the closed bracket are italicised. BROOME CAMP SCHOOL / draft two *after dawn) * camel ride on 12 year-old Kyba with Florentina in front of me on a tandem saddle beside the Indian Ocean at neap tide rolling gait beside rolling waves ~ *late afternoon) * fishing off rocks at Broome Port white birds cover rock-islands in Roebuck Bay like unironed tablecloths three big-belly pelicans among scrounged-up seagulls sunning in the long last light of day why should I know how to fish and hunt? I'm a suburban supermarket gourmet riding the tides and currents of international commerce adrift out here where they use fish to catch fish today frozen mullet to catch white-tailed llareggub ~ *early evening) * sitting on the camp oval with Greg the wild-bearded bushman astronomer watching the stars Southern Cross beneath the oval in the left back pocket ~ *night)* Gnallagunda Leon, eleven years old lying in his bunk after lights out – 'Goodnight, goanna goodnight, snake goodnight, birds goodnight, frogs goodnight, lizards goodnight, dogs.' Pause. Silence. Little Shaniqua's voice from the girls' dorm next door – 'Goodnight, everyone.' -- Andrew http://hispirits.blogspot.com/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/aburke/