Southern Cross Constellation
While I was growing up in a small town in Australia, I watched the stars and dreamed of seeing the rest of the world. Now that I have lived in Europe for years, I look back to that side of the world that lies under the Southern Cross constellation.
FIFTH VIEW OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS
Tonga, 800 AD
Take me with you, star duck,
when you fly away down south;
let me fix your broken wing.
I remember watching you
when I was young and dancing
to music so sweet
I couldn't taste the food.
You seemed so close then
but now I wish you were closer;
my grey feathers are ready to fly.
REVERSING THE TELESCOPE
Those blissfully cool summer evenings
on our back lawn in small-town Australia,
when the Milky Way was a bright sweep
and individual stars stood out clearly.
Adults, dogs and even kids were quiet;
the crickets were always making their noise
but after a while you didn’t notice it,
although you would have if they had stopped.
We looked for constellations and planets
and the first artificial satellites.
Skylab crashed near us not long after this;
we must have seen it up there in its last days.
Dad used to always say after a while:
Wouldn’t it be good to have a telescope?
Down there, where the world around me seemed so small,
watching the sky was a sort of dream
of connecting with the world outside.
Now I want to examine the tiniest things,
peering deep inside rather than outwards;
looking back, reversing the telescope.
THE WHEATBIN
When I was five years old or so,
I used to navigate the world
from a large drum that stored wheat
in the backyard of our house,
safe from the roasting sun
under the shadow cast by the fruit trees,
observing the life that swarmed all around,
a whirring universe of sound and colour:
ants and beetles of different kinds,
caterpillars linked together in long chains,
stinging nettles and rye grasses that cut your hands,
clumpy weeds sprouting tall antennae
I used to imagine were military tanks
fighting each other and beaming messages.
Every memory I recover
is another grain added to the bin
that raises me a little higher.
SELF-SUFFICIENCY
Dad planted more than twenty fruit trees
to feed his children and to trade:
apples covered with netting,
pears devoured by insects,
oranges the neighbour’s chooks roosted in,
lemons with spikes like cats’ claws,
peaches raided by possums,
nectarines pecked by birds,
plums made into jam,
apricots in glorious abundance,
mulberries staining everything and everyone.
Mum kept a small garden of cactus
to remind her of the salty, semi-desert region
she grew up in and maybe never really left.