what's graspable
on the starless night
of the blackout
as the gleaming cars
snake cautiously
up around
that hillside curve
is the way
the absence of street light
suggests the past –
not a past
I ever knew,
but one I make up, tonight

a boy slides through it
on a silver scooter,
coming back
from synagogue,
curly tails
dangling beneath
an embroidered yarmulke
perched like a lid
to imagination’s
reckless feats
or dimmer prospects –
sets of fraying notebooks
filled with scripture

*

over the road
two very stoned spectres
can’t figure out
how to turn off
the one
working headlight
on their old
silver BMW
so they leave it on
& hurry off
on foot,
jerkily,
on pills probably,
fags attached
to lower lips,
flat battery
a portent

*

an intense white light
shines down
through folding greys
on the isolated city –
it transforms
to a plastic model,
to a distant maquette,
like toys on my horizon
that white plastic bag
has been drifting
from the gutter
to the road
for three days,
when the rainwater
carries it off
to the Tasman Sea
I think I’ll miss it.