Freedom Ride.

A woman on the bus this morning was shouting into her mobile that she was "a free agent." That her divorce was now, finally, "legit." This followed a cheerful conversation with her mother, from whom she extracted a full description of her soon-to-be-consumed evening meal, item by side-saladed item.

Except for the volume, I thought, fair enough. She's unshackled. Loved. Evidently, she's happy.

And yet I was pleased when my stop came. The sun had just broken free from the clouds after days of diffusion and greyness.

Woman Posing for a Photograph II

The painting is Norham Castle, Sunrise by Joseph William Turner c.1835.

Smoke

Spooky Ship

These are the stanzas in Part III of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner where a spooky cage-like ship advances towards the old seafarer and his crew. I was quite unsettled after reading them.

Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a Death? and are there two?
Is Death that Woman's mate?

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.

The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
"The game is done! I've won! I've won!"
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.

Woman Posing for a Photograph I

Matinee

Shocked by the light
My lungs
Fold over themselves
For a lick of air -
Glistening slugs
Lapped together
In a cage

We have some business
Down on the line
Says the man with a backwards smile
You, old son, took
The wrong out

My weakness is my mouth
An opening and closing
Toad fish vessel
From which no sound
Can come

Not even a last squeak
To correct his sentence,
To say "turn"
Before unrolling my arms
And dropping my head
Theatrically to the road

Precipitate Fancies

Shapeskis II

The building in this picture was extracted from a photograph (dated 1968) in the Wolfgang Sievers Collection at the State Library of Victoria. It is Accountants House, headquarters of the Australian Society of Accountants, 49 Exhibition Street, Melbourne.


(Note that the blinds are drawn on the ground floor.)

Shapeskis I

These shapes were taken from Wassily Kandinsky's painting Several Circles (1926)