Mosman bay

Mosman bay

Mosman bay

We’ve made a small discovery today.
Margaret Preston’s View of Mosman Bay
painted late in 1929
shows the house we’ve lived in thirty years.
It dominates the skyline like a prow.
Seventy years ago, it could be now.

And where an angle does not correspond,
it’s more the artist’s handling of the paint
than changes in the detail of the scene.
A slope of houses cut-out down a cliff,
a vanished  garden with  a hidden  palm,
colored boats that make the  bay a pond:
it’s almost what you’d call a postcard view,
and yet a painting, sharp and hard and true.