On this the first after many days

On this the first after many days

On this the first after many days

On this the first after many days
of illness I am able to walk,
I make my way to where I can see
the Anzac Bridge held
like a wishbone over the roofs of Glebe.
Above me clouds appear to be
a paddock that has felt the plough,
until I smell again earth being turned
at the corner of the farm,
where what we called the log paddock sits
beside the swamp, the great damp dark
in which my brother and I used to play
jungle games. Like heroes from our comic books,
we slipped between the shadows and the rushes,
swung from trees, and felt
together we could never really come to harm.
In a moment he’ll arrive again
to sit beside my bed and we’ll remember
eating redbill soup our mother made,
sundaes on Sundays with our father at the Greek café,
the milking stool cut from a camphor laurel branch,
and evening light putting its hands into the sides of
paperbarks.
Yesterday he brought me, for old time’s sake,
a Phantom comic with a story called
“Healing Hands.” It is, he tells me, a sign.