Lyric matins of shalom I make
while magpies warbling keynote
songlines riffed note-by-note from
Aristotle’s ethic of small death
echo over the Birrarung that
happiness is the end of all philosophy
my rheumy brain in its chalk
carried off by pulmonary wings
these incoherences a flight
of differences in meaning from
you and whatever I am in these words
that make us what we are in air
a tendon pulsing just below
skin where being together is
alive no more than dear mama’s
double-helix grip on my aorta
an ecstasy this aging lover my body
shares with her rigor embrace, her
aching shoulder blades, trembling
wrists and teacup in mid-air again,
are mine, the limbic brain high
on cortisol airing their visit
in the night with Thanatos and Eros
toe-to-toe, the two-back beast
entwined in their hot hands
while the quality-of-life nature clip
shows how breathless love begins
when seventy-eight percent agree
that strangulation during sex
is how we humans ought to do it
for Gaia is running low on oxygen
to feed our young as I breakfast
with a black and boneyard greyhound
retired on her Ferrari-red Italian leather
lounge adrift in paws of speed and sleep
while she divides Vegemite from
buttered toast, for futile is the count
how many knees her mind makes
as she triangulates her origami
folds of spider legs and not quite
seventeen syllables of disjointed
love, the great hot air balloon
of rhetoric arising above us all
in our high apartments with its tourist
wicker basket of humanity below
the flame of speculation running
low on the politics of terror and gas
while outside the window of inner sense
in late winter sun a balcony of orchids
blooms its tercets of purpling joy
décor for the spring-lamb barbecue;
or so the marbled poet in grandpa’s
Belsen pjays warbles with imaginary
flute a tune for his greyhound who
with a transcendental sigh, breaks
wind.
Notes: Cerberus, the multi-headed hound that guards Hades; Belsen,
Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp WWII.