So I download Zoom
and Instagram
and Words with Friends
and CovidSafe
I dream I put
my phone on the track
to stop
an oncoming train
14 May 2020
First published in Written in the Time of COVID19, Shire of Nillumbik, Victoria, October 2020
Proximity: the poet Jackson. Get uncomfortably close.
So I download Zoom
and Instagram
and Words with Friends
and CovidSafe
I dream I put
my phone on the track
to stop
an oncoming train
14 May 2020
First published in Written in the Time of COVID19, Shire of Nillumbik, Victoria, October 2020
For those who are afraid, this
is what we are.
Made of spots and threads of light,
it looks like a giant brain, tissue
microscoped. Each neuron, gathered
axons, spot of light, plays
a cluster
of galaxies. Each drift
of connective tissue, teased-out wisp
of dandelion clock, mimes a trace
of dark matter. The scale indicator
reads one
gigaparsec: two billion light-years.
No commentary, no soundtrack.
The great column
of colonies of shining globules and filaments
turns in majestic silence.
For those who are afraid,
this.
The view zooms in: the ship flies closer.
Among the lights, black gaps appear,
spread, become caves
of space, of holding
everything
apart. Gravity
and Light. Play it
again. Listen. Is that
a sussuration? Whispers, waves, pings
along the filaments? What is it?
This.
For those who are afraid.
From A coat of ashes
Watch the videos and read about the Millennium Simulation Project at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics.
The italicised phrase in stanza 4 is from the poem “From The Testament of Tourmaline” by Randolph Stow, in The Land’s Meaning, Fremantle Press 2012, p. 147.
The day before the fridge broke down
I wished it would
shut up
As I listened, trying to breathe,
the noise separated
I could hear the electrons
shocking about in the wires
the liquefied gas gurgling thinly
in the pipes
a ringing like a legion of teeny steel hammers
beating and beating on teeny steel tubes
It sounded like a mill of miniature machines
worked by miniature sweating slaves
The heat exchanger was crammed
with tiny miserable elves
They couldn’t get at the food
they worked all day to cool
I heard stomachs roaring,
lungs gargling, feet shuffling
Many mouths were whispering
Many hands began to twist
and pull
First published in Ink Sweat & Tears, 8 July 2021