Shedding the weekday, workaday
adrenalin of traffic hum,
distance becomes audible,
echoing the cadences of koels
calling up the clouds to no
avail: the rains don't come.
White ibis feed their squawking young
clamouring from cabbage palms;
dragon lizards rear beside my way,
trailing barred tails like tongues;
the river preens its waters
to a semi-crystalline Nile green;
a flame tree in its vernissage,
slender, tender, not yet grown,
beads itself in scarlet buds
like rowans of the northern snows.
Pulling on sky's blue akubra
brim horizon to horizon,
I traverse the brand-new bridge
whose handrails course with energies,
divining rods relaying subtle signals
pulsing through the pylons,
cables singing like a Greek hydraulis…
Impressions flood the cortex
with a sensory electrolyte,
frequencies cohering
into image carried home.
The poem belongs to morning,
as the morning to the poem…