Crammed onto his high
stone square, he cranes
to see the whole number
of eternity as it unwinds

The magic people are coming, you said.
You took us outside and pointed at the sky.

Across the road stands a woman
wearing a child on her heart,

My mum always says, I get where water wouldn’t.
When he drank me, I left myself somewhere sunken

Mountains behind us,
the land spreads out, flat and brittle,
like a discarded snakeskin.

Two table’s worth of no-longer strangers
at dusk on a lane of nautical miles
basket of bread, bottles of wine, talk of home
and places called home

My father and I
skim the surface of conversations
something like those swallows do
down at the lake

On Neptune Street
you may dream of the tide,
its drag and lure
but your feet walk
on solid pavement.

Crouched above the stream he dug,
known by his kid-along brother
as the dry gulch, its circulation pump
rarely switched on