My last night here,
sitting with my feet out on the roof, the moon very nearly full, the familiar silhouettes
of the trees.
No one takes a picture
of me as I sit where I have sat since I was ten. No one has jumped to record
the final time so I make a word picture for myself.
In this family we were
taught to love real and fierce and not to wrap up too much affection in bricks
and mortar.
And I don’t.
Not really, but I will
miss this sloping roof and my eucalyptus tree.
There’s a box downstairs with my name
scrawled over it, but that itself is not my childhood,
It cannot be labelled
or constrained.
It is timeless placeless
and wild, it spends a lot of time outside singing loudly, up trees and imagining things.
It informs a good deal
of my present.
So, you see it isn’t
really the last night at all. This isn’t the last time I will sit with my feet
dangling out of a window enjoying the night air and the moon.
I will always find
comfort in the smell of a eucalyptus tree, and smile when I find myself
somewhere the street lamps turn off at midnight.
