Canberra
Every week or two I've seen him
across the past ten years,
the battered freedom of his van
fitted out with all he needs
to eat, to sleep, to drive around
the station of his solitude
of which our lake must be the core.
I see him at the market sometimes —
Sundays, half-past-four,
when vegetables are cut by half.
I see him at a road-side park,
inside the slowness of mid-morning,
boiling up his billy on
a single drift of smoke.
Mid-seventies, I'd reckon,
and European surely.
I've heard his accent in the distance.
Always, he is by himself;
apparently without self-pity,
alert for moving on.
Now and then a passer-by
will offer him some word or greeting.
He'll hear them out but has no need.
The van is worn but still in rego,
a reddish, home-grown hermit-shell
tough enough to go the distance.
His licence, too, would still be current.
He'd have no diagnosis.
Each evening, camped there by the lake,
we know he's less than legal.
Between our stern interstices
he's found a final niche —
and, clearly, there's a pension somewhere.
Squad cars see he means no harm.
Bureaucrats have bigger fish
and by-laws for the frying.
Year 8 bullies haven't noticed
or think him less than sport.
He breaks the homily of Kant:
Never do anything
you wouldn't want to see
endlessly repeated
or words to that effect.
In the city-of-loose-ends-secured
he is our one anomaly,
offhandedly permitted.
Our attitude's a two-way gift:
his loneliness a talisman
to show us how a city needs
the person who does not quite fit.
We like such mild asymmetry —
or just a bit of it.