Frankly there might be hundreds

Not all my poems were turgid and angry.

Wallace

The air sparkles with ice,

There’s a cattle dog on the doorstep.

She made a film of herself

storming down King Street

tearing her clothes off,

hurling them at strangers.

When she was in the facility she

grew obsessed by the bench

padlocked to the garden fence

she could see from her window.

She planned a film of that too,

with all her friends, one by one,

“Relating to the bench,” she said.

All of us, relating to the bench.

As if we could have her pain.

She comes in every shade of magic -

pigeon pink and green glimmering

teal with an orange shadow,

the grey and creams and red of sandstone,

the heavy bruise colours of Hobart when it rains,

singing with that voice of crystal and syrup.

I don’t know where I got her.

I can't remember when she wasn't there.

I do remember the flowers she carried

tiptoing down a corridor while I watched

from a distance at the shapes and colours

camaraderie might take as it approaches.