Toe and Ballet

Another painted wall

Anzac Day 2013

Homecoming

All day, day after day, they’re bringing them home,
they’re picking them up, those they can find, and bringing them home,
they’re bringing them in, piled on the hulls of Grants, in trucks, in convoys,
they’re zipping them up in green plastic bags,
they’re tagging them now in Saigon, in the mortuary coolness
they’re giving them names, they’re rolling them out of
the deep-freeze lockers — on the tarmac at Tan Son Nhut
the noble jets are whining like hounds,
they are bringing them home
– curly heads, kinky-hairs, crew-cuts, balding non-coms
– they’re high, now, high and higher, over the land, the steaming chow mein,
their shadows are tracing the blue curve of the Pacific
with sorrowful quick fingers, heading south, heading east,
home, home, home — and the coasts swing upward, the old ridiculous curvatures
of earth, the knuckled hills, the mangrove-swamps, the desert emptiness…
in their sterile housing they tilt towards these like skiers
– taxiing in, on the long runways, the howl of their homecoming rises
surrounding them like their last moments (the mash, the splendour)
then fading at length as they move
on to small towns where dogs in the frozen sunset
raise muzzles in mute salute,
and on to cities in whose wide web of suburbs
telegrams tremble like leaves from a wintering tree
and the spider grief swings in his bitter geometry
– they’re bringing them home, now, too late, too early.

Donald Bruce Dawe

All cleaned up

Living with concrete

Kent Rd

It's not all black and white in Collingwood

Moonee Ponds Creek

One less Railway Hotel

Trailer of broken dreams

At that moment, life seemed full of possibilities

Restoration

Peckish

Another doorway

Melbourne water

Everyone's an expert

Easter break

Fading memories

Up in the air

The Bolte Bridge

The Morell Bridge

Mr Briquette

Blah Blah Blah

Bird on a wall

Purple rain

How long is a piece of string?

At number 12, the house is gone

Anything goes when it comes to art

A sunburnt country

A bright sunny day

No Standing

Free range

It's a long way to the top

Down and out at 41

Windows

Tinning St

Sydney Rd style

Matchstick world

The orange truck

Spare Parts

The missing A

Somerton

Flags

Sikh Temple

Railroad faces

Gassed up

No surface untouched

More faces

Broken window

Two doors