Jaya Savige: national museum

If out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry, what
do we make of our quarrels with Canberra?
- Martin Johnston

a currawong pecks at scraps
but looks at me askance

my sunglasses slip onto my nose
from off my apparently polemical

gallery of hair - the bird becomes suspicious
across the lake

parliament house peers through
the crisp monocle of the capital

the tactical colours of a yacht club sway
in fig dark water
darker than a tea-tree bay

the pupil as a basin then
& I'm sucked into the lens

            sucked into the nest
            sucked into the cataract of the civic

the wide eye glazes over
a thin, darkening film.