Bruce Dawe: homo suburbensis

One constant in a world of variables
A man alone in the evening in his patch of vegetables,
and all the things he takes down with him there


Where the easement runs along the back fence and the air
smells of tomato-vines, and the hoarse rasping tendrils
of pumpkin flourish clumsy whips and their foliage sprawls


Over the compost-box, poising rampant upon
the palings …
He stands there, lost in a green
confusion, smelling the smoke of somebody’s rubbish


Burning, hearing vaguely the clatter of a disk
in a sink that could be his, hearing a dog, a kid,
a far whisper of traffic, and offering up instead


Not much but as much as any man can offer
time, pain, love, hate, age, war, death, laughter, fever.