Really it’s more of a ramp
Every day I walk down the same steps as Katherine Mansfield;
the asphalt zigzag where the fennel grows wild or
I did until I realised I could shave five minutes off my commute
by going through the carpark, behind the skips.
My mother was born here, when the fennel still grew.
She read me Mansfield when I was too young, and
could not understand. I know better than to reference better poets;
you call their name, you welter in their shadow, so instead
It is mild today. A tui watches from the power lines.
A tradie eats a six dollar pie. Steak and fennel.
It is a three dollar pie, but moreso.
Nevermind the world is ending
A tradesman on smoko, an old supermarket
a certain not-today-ness. Let us talk digital strategy etc.
I am keyboarding; we don’t talk about the nukes.
The world is afire, struck at dawn, whirling worldwise.
It is the new unknown-ness. It is the place between Clouds.
It is entirely companionable, the whole vicious mess of it.
I have found another error. I am tired on the weekends.
I mostly drift cloudlike, looming shadow on a warm day.
I mostly drift.
Wayward and lorn and all that, you know? Does that make sense? I know what it means but I don’t feel like it makes sense.
A receipt fell out of my pocket
for some food I don’t remember eating.
I chased it and I do not know why—
maybe somebody could use it to steal my identity
or, you know, something. That’s a lot of work
for very little payoff. Just some receipts
for food I don’t remember eating.