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Hymn For Michael Wordley
on the occasion of his 50th birthday
beyond the fence trees fizz
the close trees,
hitch-hikers from the North,
are giant rustling grasses:
the silent eucalypts admit them
they bounce and pop with birdies
dancing a bonnie bagatelle
while their silverbacks do politics
if it had different colour
- not all green like this -
it would explain the Chinese invention of fireworks
above me the hands of man have made a patio of oregon
with American vines strangling American wood, anti-clockwise,
while beneath this poem a jarrah bench swells
welling against the tracks of the planing machine
it wants its old shape back
behind surges a mighty house in which a family happened
smitten with timber and sound it survived the Jesus thing
smug as mud
and lets herbs and fowls through the door to make more
there is no emptyness
but much where nothing is
Philip White
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