My Hounds


My hounds will never find me,
even with the cracks in the tabula rasa.
            They, after all,
            have the lyrebird to discover.
      It will be the Yarra today
      and for all of tomorrow,
though the hawthorn has otherwise
captivated my love,
though no passage seems to proceed thence.
I wasn’t born here and so the Yarra is brown and glossy.
The statuary province including Charles George Gordon might
bear a basking irrelevance but our hats betray
our vagrancy by the Yarra. We sit awhile.
                        The hounds will never find me, my hounds
                        or otherwise, the Yarra yellowing
                        like a similarly withering dandelion
overshadowed by the best red gum.
      She takes pictures of canoes and freshmen,
      is otherwise captivated by the hawthorn.
Princes Bridge outlines the prevailing picture of surveillance
and skullcaps, providing the lectern and rostrum to a city proscenium.
What
emptiness!
            Still absent. It must be the wigs and the gathered yokes and
the black coats the hounds are in thrall of,
            then.

Corey Wakeling

Corey Wakeling is a poet and critic living in Takarazuka, Japan. His second full-length collection of poems is The Alarming Conservatory (Giramondo, 2018).

More by Corey Wakeling ›

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