Evensong
By Lachlan Brown
Published 12 September 2023
O to be back in the southwest at dusk,
beneath the red streaks that sometimes
line the sky with spray tan enthusiasm.
This is the day worn thin,
marked by the wind's sudden realisations
(trees are a nation state, a beard is horizontal).
Don't you know that winter means
passing houses during the family meal,
each hallway bathed in a television's blue?
Don't you know that we must live in the shadows
of great financial institutions?
But this pinstriped night
where stars bleed into city lights,
where planes could be skywriting
the evening sky somehow,
where each constellation scaffolds the canopy,
allowing the universe to find its breath
in imperious and strange relations.