walleah press
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VAUGHAN PRAIN
Moon over Lavender Bay
For Brett Whiteley
- Late November jacaranda petals toss on pathways,
- fidget rainsoaked parkland near your house.
Sheets on your line
- are gessoed
-
- pastures of moist intent.
- Below, the loosefisted harbour begins to stir.
Your laughing
- giraffe
-
- on its window ledge strains for a view. Ferns
stiffen over one another
- to climb your turret, clamber for
- sinewy footholds.
-
- No moon tonight, but everything still bursts
- with what you named, your wavering hand on
yachts’ spines,
- tendrils of hair, criss-
-
- crossing shadows, corrugations of high tide.
- In ochre &
- ultramarine you still say race you to the beach
-
- and back, insisting to Patrick that cerise and
orange announce optic
- ecstasy, allowing yourself once more to
- wander over
-
- the sleeping model’s impossible abundance,
going absolutely out
- on a limb.
- Radiant wide-eyed
-
- you jostle amongst us, full of
- midutterance, fussy drips, savage hatching,
screen-saver jitters, have
- briefly stepped outside.
Vaughan Prain lives in Bendigo and teaches in the Faculty of Education at La Trobe University. His poetry has been published in various Australian
literary magazines.
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