Robert Verdon, #277, dreaming the life

you might psychoanalyse this

if it’s still fashionable

rug of fog on the fawn hill

winter wrack like

a torn dressing gown

in a mental hospital

as we gather nuggets

and blueberries, black

white and yellow pardolote

in the melaleuca at the

foot, there is a workman

in a bush by an electric

truck, people in the café know

us, but we have not been to

this part before, perhaps it is a

dream, like the one I had this

morning when an uncouth man in the

next banana chair rolled onto

me as if I didn’t exist

lying there like Death in Venice

but let us get back to gathering

if not of nuts in May then (and

what can anyone do?) as much

of the good times as we can

before we die

then the dawn will come up like a

bugled curtain rod, and swab up

all of us who have been in the wars

and in all the anxious peaces

of all the time there is