Purple haze
edges these days,
curtails our weekend wanderings.
(Late summer's belting heatwave's dried
the dam that seven summers
covered hoof-sluiced mud
where cattle hock-cool stooped to slurp.)
Even out at Seaspray twin braids,
Fauvist horizon-barring, lie,
child-pastel cute,
their truth to tell of bushfires
down by Wilson's Prom,
southernmost tip of Oz -
or maybe those
so surreal roils are drifting up
across the Bass Strait from Tasmania -
disaster too is painterly.
Purple haze
edges these ovened days.
You best not swim in Cowwarr Weir today,
in case your car not make it out
along the one tarred, single-track
or stalled on dirt steep back-trails foiling.
Steer clear of notorious Walhalla's
narrow, chimneying valley,
or be outrun easily uphill.
Purple haze
edges these glazing days,
mixing with dreamy
orange margins, peachy washes,
blue gum volatility.
Mole crickets shrill dusk;
deep starfields wait-out night;
the whiskey wind's a peaty tang.
................
