In her wide-open sanctuary

a female sun moth’s yellow patches are hard to spot

as she lies against grasses allowed to fend for themselves

in baking-paper paddocks, you and I circling

their deliberate rendition, these hardly promising

‘coarsely vesicular, minor interbedded silty sand and baked soils’

of the city’s far western edge, under a gathered sky,

solar ringbolt at its centre.  Even herons heading for the wetlands

seem to give this place a wide berth.

Everything lies low:

tumbleweed mustard, daisy, details of the plain’s wider story,

stellar scumble of oxalis.

It would be easy, I suppose, to hold a suburb in contempt

thrown together in its sameness

but a woman in a brilliant sari is taking her grandchild to a playground

where New Holland honeyeaters are comparing their tiny golden epaulettes.

​

(Note: the source for the italicised line is Vandenberg AHM, 1974, ‘Melbourne: Geological Survey of Victoria’, Mines Department Melbourne Victoria

​

Panorama: the Journal of Travel, Place and Nature, Issue 12 'Cities', July 2024