The Porch

Back again at your place
where even the rubbish is a revelation.
You pick up the instrument
oldest habits stop being habits. We collaborate.

Teachers said you couldn’t concentrate
“dumb but pretty”
there’d be a husband out there someplace
or job at the chicken factory like your mum.

A luthier I once met explained the crazy patience
required to get those curves, how imperceptible cracks
are landmines waiting
to explode all the music years down the track.

Harmony is so damned hard
anyone can reach it, but to maintain that connection?
Plus all our lives have cracks too, you’re
still in the industry
though it’s been a while between recordings so what.
Hey — we’re both grandparents now
(worried for the world)
& have laughed already before our second drink.
We sing together.

You hated the stage
could never flick that switch
where one becomes another entity up there, subsumed.

Two famished magpie parents land on the balcony.
Beyond a few rules of beggary
there is no interest in humans or a future.
A stormbird pair arrives downhill
to wreak havoc in the trees.
Your yard bleeds into the National Park
& this is a day without fences.

There is so little time left.
Thankfully it, & us, are worthless
thereby holy.