but you could say that about all of them ~ ours

*

i looped them over the undoing of our street

all born in a house 2 here 2 there

i worked them into the dawn awake

*

firstly we slept zero

with the smell of milk

& our babies –

& the rigmarole of wrapping & the unwrapping of them

*

we signed our roundy names on the Certificate

of Authenticity crossing to the townhall

with its full clock ~ meat pie in each hand

*

we drove to every beach when they would not sleep

with our atlas of rivers & mountains & rocky roads

in the stony days of long sounds.

*

twice in one week i smacked the front out of 2 cars

*

at one beach

the size of latitude was light ~ longitude quiet

i slept myself. my babies ears to the shore on lull & hush.

*

today ella says matt

knows what sea means in maths –

back then it was roundabout an hour.

*

virtual beach

inside the baby is feeding.

& you are useless at weaning.

*

so you sit with your lonely ear

to the busy cities

of tv.

*

you are a circle

& your baby an o

*

you receive the news

about a beach with no sand

which is about all you’re up to.

*

you hear people rhyme

beach & reef

jetties & amenities in the same sentence

*

& you see the engineers

who had designs

in their eyes

*

you meet golden bay

& oriental parade

in 2 frames

*

& wonder how far sand travels

to make people happy & your baby –

he will never know from where that sand came.

explorers

to be an explorer

you would start behind your nearest school

& you would explore around an area where

you hadn’t been before

*

you would call that

the beginning of your exploration

& you would table it.

the school would be a metaphor

for what you never saw while you were there.

*

you would find

things that hadn’t been uprooted before or noticed

& you would imagine that behind the school was

the beginning

*

then you would go behind that.

& you would look behind what you

were just looking at & turning over.

you would need to take lots of steps

to distance yourself.

*

you would repeat the process

so you would all the time be going behind things.

& looking at the back of them

*

people would say

oh she is just exploring behind there

she is trying to get to the back of everything.

*

& you would be taking steps

to see behind the last thing you just saw

*

in this way you would be a True Explorer.

& if you kept going at it

you could say you were

seeing round the back of whole countries

& that you had come from a school

whose name you didn’t get down

because you were too busy looking round the back.

*

& people would not so much be interested

in the fact that you were a true explorer of

the back of things

but that you didn’t record where you started.

& that you hadn’t noticed

the very front.