… …

wears its beauty as only the truly beautiful can effortlessly everywhere the dapple and dazzle infiltrates the early sun-kissed crystalline waves push gently up the sand as if sharing a joke (or a secret) already the water is winding up shapes in the shallows seed pods closing tight birds on branches fretting from one …..to the other ….. the men have circled the camp chairs ready to splain fortissimo high-tensile steel bracket creep strongman politics and how to hang those kitchen cabinets (4 screws will do) an interloper my shadow follows (as best it can) over trembling grounds and grasses — vacancies opening up all along the coast the night we lay entwined on a rented bed while the wind rattled and rose and the trees fell about

Image: Manly Beach (harbour side) c. 1890, by William Joseph Macpherson, c/- Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW.  And for readers still sweating in the heat – here’s John Luther Adams in a treeless place, only snow.