You are known by the company you keep

you are known by the company you keep

Where is the black snake of my dream, fleeing the pressure of my thumping steps atop its watery sanctum?

traversing sand is exhausting, though an overcast day spontaneously I sweat bullets, legs gone flaccid, thermal layers sloughed off in the trough of some undulation in the track, woozy at the crossroads, signposts a toy motorbike & high‐tension wires; jittery rabbits of the pre‐dusk light glide down gouges in the sand made from motorbikes, to hide in the safer sinks under paperbarks; willy wagtail & one long‐legged laconic marsh bird, not to forget, a cadre of (devote) flies, the company I keep at the corner of Anstey and Keane:

flora exiled in the southern suburbs browned Mangles kangaroo paws, orchids aslumber, the charred outer bark of a balga tree, old slow grower with a bromeliad splash of hair, I see the grass tree, I see the Black Boy, if I tried hard enough: a coolamon leaking a saccharin ferment; touch confirms sight

smell is non‐registering, but taste ahhh an exclusion.

John C. Ryan