I will catch that train, with the ghost of myself
and in company that can only — enigmatically — perplex.
I hope you will be there,
vivider that I ever remember you being — perhaps
unsettlingly so, despite all my larger-than-larger-
than-lifesize love.
What we see on our journey from the carriage windows
will be conjured up magically specially for us:
vistas of meaning, in no uncertain terms;
lessons too quick for my slow human reason;
questions I could never live up to, in life.
We’ll alight at a station called CHINAMAN CREEK
and swerve right at the fence-post down our old Quartz Chip Hill
still covered in coffee bush, sundews, milkmaids, pin-cushions
and those ragged yellow flowers
that only ever grew here.
Then, skirting the blunt, stony banks of expansive Big Pond —
where the solitary cormorants come hunting for fish —
we’ll veer off left up the kangaroo track,
pock-marked and pitted by the pointy front-claw on the creature’s back-foot
till we reach the narrow ridge, in good time for sunset.
A late sun-shower in the brilliant solar glow
will leave us glistening in our skins, as we catch our first glimpse
of that tall-austere pine,
branches covered in distinct, spiral cones
and combing air fragrant with needle-faint evergreen hush,
as a sign. At that instant,
as we shift our gaze to the East,
we’ll see a perfect double rainbow bridging twilit sky
and beneath — in slow-motion —
a weightless full moon that is holding our breaths
as it starts to rise clear of the dark Earth’s rim.
Chinaman Creek 