Being Bardi

Listen to the rumble
of an angry moon
a lone motorcycle,
headlight vibrating
from the engine
the uneven bricks
street glistening
from an evening rain
revealing the
branches of thick
trees lining like lovers
the blossoms
sweet, heavy,
innocent. for now.

This city has pigs
flying pigs. They hover
along the riverbanks.

It is April and this city
has trees bearing fruit
words, dripping and dancing
in syllables from the branches

It is April and outside the library
the poet tree offers its fruit
of phrases for free.

They have fenced in the site
to keep the past safe inside
or the future out and away or
perhaps to stop them from
blending like ex-lovers
meeting one last time
passions meeting like
sunrise over the ocean.

One thing poets and politicians have in common
to start a subject with "I had a dream"
I had a dream, no.

Dear City I rode in the first time on a
bus when they still smelled
like dead dinosaurs in the dead of night.
But I was wide awake because the
City is no dream, nor nightmare but
the sounds and smells and grit
of reality

power is so much more intense when
felt with the breaths of life.

The office workers and the tourists
do not see the Saint of Vine Street
coat upon coat, like secret powers
one sock up and one down,

She scuffles in a slow, slow dance
with the concrete, a prayer for
those who see the Saint of Vine Street
and smile at her in understanding.

a crumb for the pigeons a candy
for the invisible children so like her.
she who has nothing manages
to give so much on the streets

where the office workers and the tourists
do not see the Saint of Vine Street.

If you stand perfectly still, this short walk from the river
you can hear the echoes., the past heartbeats of the city.
Wolves padding quietly and then howling at the chase,
Shawnee turni gg their head sharply at the sound of
a tree falling from one last swing of an axe, saws and
sharp tools bringing a home to last by the shores.

People shouting along the river, their wares onboard
the steaming ships, the flatboats, the loads of
pigs and oats, lumber, whiskey, slaves
to and from, up river down river a steady flow of
a City's life being created.

The screaming of Irish hate over the draft, Confederates
moving silent through the crows as the flames lick through
the buildings the sounds of paradox in the bright haze.
The long low belching of the trains rattling along
the burnished tracks without stop

The sound of the wagons moving slowly up and down
the streets, the heritage of plague to flu looking for
the dead, the long lined shuffle two decades later
from the jobless, the homeless, the hopeless.



And then the trains again, duets with the first
large engine planes and the flood of monochrome
passengers, olive or white the child-men on their
way to make a world, unmake a world,
survive the sounds and smoke of war.

Unlike past sounds the guitars crescendo the
counterpoint with the riots of this year, that year
the escalating of firearms and their sharp, strident
announcements and these are the echoes of the city

weaving around the sounds of engines and tires and
the soft, soft cooing of a pigeon before it
skitters away from a laughing child in the CIty.

There is something different about the city
when behind the wheel, windows rolled,
sounds muted if heard at all.

I remember 8mm films, bright colours
but no sounds as if the present in that
past was silent.


People, cars, birds buses, flags
snapping high above the street
birds playing with the flapping shadows.

I turn the radio on and turn
from station to station
until I find the city's soundtrack.

colour upon colour
nations blending with
nations everything
blends the grey
of the buiildings
concrete and marble
overcoming the rainbows

This is how a city should be
a focus of its being and
the laughter and
colour upon colour because variety
is the true foundation.

High overhead
the city, the world,
The Peregrines with brood
watch over their dominion.
the pigeons, blind and
oblivions to any
impending doom.
The starlings hoping
inside their dna that
their size means safety.
The Peregrines
watch over their dominion above
the concrete canyons
the crowless concrete canyons
that keep their kingdom theirs.
A dark shadow flys over head and the
feathers ruffle for a moment
high overhead
the city, the world