Cooling off at midnight

New Year 2011

the tented night sky billows pegged to earth by ghostly gums two red new stars glaze and vanish in the haze of the moon another star shoots briefly and likewise another year has fired will it be our last?

View from my bathroom window

a long-tailed bird, looks ancient, lumbers in flight above the dusty bush (this is the Karoo remember) the words of a caustic friend of the night before and the sham niceties still linger like bad breath i'm lonely against the bars but the pain in my chest pricks the ganglions of awareness and I soar

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