Poem for the Day - The Intruder

The Intruder


The heads of the flowers are purple. Even the scattered wood pile is aromatic. Shrubs explode into green splinters and the air is super-heated. Dwellingup in January, and you sense by noon a tactile touchdown on floral sheets. Your compassionate friend has given you her house, a page of notes: the way the light falls, how the heat works its way through the house. I've made up the front room, please eat all the food! In the table centre purple flowers pout from their stems. You add a hasty smile to all that you touch: Italian coffee, wine, a complimentary shower gel. There's a washing machine, and no telephone! No mobile reach in this town where wheels jog along the ground. A cargo of timber spilling somewhere you imagine for a new Yunderup school. And there on the table a map spread across your palms: inland roads to Lane Poole, Hotham Valley railway; a history caught up in the text of a town, tree walks, the Bibbulum track, Nanga Mill, Yarragil. You think about the next seven days, watering the lawn, the timber-mill across the street; logs lazy as sleepers stacked for dreams. The chance of meeting a companion in the house! You'd rather choose a passage of flowers, the quietest of rooms, a glass of wine, even your nocturnal notebook & pen. You roll up the blinds, put the hi-fi on, lay topless on the bed. There's a rhythm of shuffling at your feet, a thick, black lizard trailing the dust from his skin. He sways side to side as if in adoration, then slips out. Soon to be located in the sun on the porch. Rounding off his gaze, his task finished, he ambles back to that little plot of earth where his life is contained, where there is a garden going on, and no one is singing.