Saxe blue sky ( thursday morning )

Saxe blue sky ( thursday morning )

Saxe blue sky ( thursday morning )

the millennium train
                  whips past
                        the tollway to the Harbour Bridge
CHANGE GIVEN  CHANGE GIVEN  AUTO COINS ONLY
                                 in bright orange
          against a saxe blue sky.
the gigantic matchsticks sculpture,
              one burnt,  one phosphorous red and ready,
   jutting up
                   from a closely trimmed mound of couch.
a bronze frieze in capital letters,  on the corner
                          of the NSW Art Gallery —
        CHRISTOPHER WREN, (old cosmopolitan),
       (Thomas)  GAINSBOROUGH —
                                          flashes by,
     seventeenth and eighteenth century ghosts,
                         glimpsed like brief suggestions, or notes,
as I enter the drab tunnel
                                        towards Martin Place
on my way
                to advance automation,
                        to sort a set of bookbinding cards
(discard,     edit,    or    keep,
           according,       fo course,
                                             to a method)
cards detailed with
                       pencilled handwriting,
      traces of colleagues
                                           now moved on.
         I remember  most of them,
more,       I remember their memos,
circulated notes —
                  our names listed,
          stapled to a corner,
memo read,  name ticked,        then passed along
                                 to the next name —
         pre-email,
                      and computers then exclusive to data,
            the binding card
                                mimicking book spines,
              a card index
                                the instrument of record.

the train squeals into Redfern
                      I emerge from the dim light
      deep under the city
               to see the saxe blue sky
                                   look smoggier,
                pale grey-brown on the horizon,
                                        from here, in the inner west,
   the way I walk to work,
the block — the aboriginal housing co-operative —
                                                     demolished, gone.
           another set of glimpses,      whisps,
    traces of people
                  now      moved on.
                       on this frosty thursday morning
only a small group of revenants
                warming up around
                                a smoking 44-gallon drum.