Hot Cross Buns

It’s a delightful torrid brilliant afternoon

the thin blue scar above the eastern slope

makes me heavy with hope and your remarkably

quick-witted silence is smog crawling a building

a sign says THIS GRASS NEEDS A BREAK the phrase

under the paving-stones, the beach arrests me

a merchant marine of robins takes no heed they keep

hoisting thick brown ropes of worm out of the surf

this snatch of lilies and their creamy trumpets

anywhere I go I’m liable to be recognized

the boy wonder whose heart was a macadamia nut

but that was decades ago and I’ve had operations

really I’m mostly like you except you are very cheeky

even as you sit there kinetic as the macaw

perched on a real tree sagging inside a polymer jungle

hot cross buns and coffee your treat and I’m grateful

admittedly I was getting a bit peckish and broody

fire engines so proud to be slick with drizzle

my ring in its particular shiny grime is smiling

the face of an aqueduct in a roster of taking-off birds

they have been here ever since birds were invented

murmuring and leaving behind shreds of pink silk

I’m all agog memorizing the way your sweat bursts

the dandelion shoots anticipate our footsteps

blowing their heads off to a song you wouldn’t expect

tiny spirits with tiny white parasols are finally going home

and the unreachable island of pale yellow straw is

fucked in the ass with trash