Today I wear a light grey merino top

It clashes with the rainbow scarf around my neck

But I wear it still as it is starting to match my hair

The people on my street don’t care much for matching

 

While the sun still shines the people browse along

Faces I meet they parade up street

Their past-times more familiar than names

Sitting beside the hearsay at the apple crate café

 

The brightly coloured relics of their hey-day

Brighten up the lives that brace against the passing grey

Away from the fray, yet near the river mouth

Just past forty three degrees south

 

Peering above my flat cup of white

The silage bales stew in the distant sun

Which competes with the wind for our small talk

Those endless competitors above watch us walk

 

People repeatedly robe and disrobe themselves

To much amusement of the elements

Refusing to be beaten in, they bask and burn

Under thin ozone and populate their skin

 

Little milk foam and chocolate smudged moustaches

Wander off on long leash with forget-me-nots and top knots

Blowing in the breeze, running, squatting, jumping

On mud-spot rainbow legs and boots like little bugs

 

Eating rocks and ripping leaves under the vacant gaze

Of tired eyes hiding under free-form hair

The wasps hover over mistaking my plate

For the garden from which it came

 

I make a side serving for them so they can sit

Humble company float before me incessantly

But much less obtrusively than

My own little bugs