Invoking the muse, in the garden muse, sing with me under the papaya tree, kneel with me in sawdust beside silver-beet and rhubarb-leaf. hold me in your talons above the hallowed lawn. greet me sweetly with the hedge-loppers, sweetly with my organs lain out under the clothesline. muse, eat the cabbages from my camphor box, pitch your tent on my patio, wash your hair in my bathwater. go on. i have been standing lonely in the garden all this time — lonely with manure in my hair and soil in my gums, holding the dregs of this poem like a toy. muse, french-kiss me under the papaya tree. it is a new year after all and i have waited with woodmouse and witchweed in the starless gully. i have paced circles and circles around the garden hose, bellowing your name. some evenings i hunker with an oil lamp in the grasses. and i can see your breath, now and then, rise out of the thickets. but you are following the footfall of an other and i am just shadow — a hopeless silhouette, clutching at words as if they meant anything at all.
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