Return to Manly
I unshutter the porthole
to gaze down on Sydney’s waterside.
I focus on a stacked roof
shaped like concrete orange peelings.
Once Aborigines sang along this creek
to celebrate the waters where fish was plentiful
until white folk landed
with muskets and chains of prisoners.
Now red bottlebrush and eucalyptus
fringe artificial cobalt pools
and green pawpaws swell
to yellow in lilac evenings.
Smoke plumes in grey suburbs.
Carpet snakes uncoil from roof spaces
in the cool twilight
scorpions leave their rocks to hunt.
In gardens, kookaburras jabber
and feast on humming-bird moths.
Tobacco-flowers cascade nectar before
tarantulas scuttle over drenched lawns.
Flight of the dragonfly 