Leaning
By Pam Brown
Published 1 January 2021
I could watch
a fire bird
nature program
or let it run,
ignore it & lean
from the window
into the giddying view -
so dense is the air
above the traffic
in Flinders Street
six lanes wide
& the static city
towers beyond
a dirty patch
of olive & other
greens that is
Hyde Park
or spend some minutes
scratching library labels
from the spines
of out-of-print
obscurities
in this
double-divan situation,
a sort of
irksome Larkin-land -
the bedsit odours,
cheese on toast
& floor polish
phagophobic ravers
stagger off at dawn,
drug-whacked
& whooping.
remnants shove
the milk-crate
from corner
to squalid corner
trailing the cask
in a torpor
behind the 24-hour
Shell Select,
another day
slides slowly on,
another effulgent sunset
sharpens streaming
red-dot tail-lights,
little beacons
passing through.