He has an uncertain contour, caused by too much Himalayan wool. There is a fluidity to his movements. He displaces the night with a dreaming ease; not lumbering like a Bear, nor Jack. His legs drift in black billows of cotton, in smooth pauses; it is a muttering walk. He walks to himself. First sign of dness. His hand calms the diamond hard sheen of an old, polished steel bar, then something summons him across the ashpalt.
Later, his fingers brush the coppery hairs of his moustache. The anomalous moustache which is lighter than his dark hair, and has emerged continuously since 1978. Cars pass, and an ugly milk bar, now cream.
Down the road, another, darker school. His hands resting on the fence, he apprehends ghosts of himself, stuttering, flickering to life, tethered to the Earth by some occult force of the Whitlam era.
What would you say to him now, if he could hear?
“Stay off the piss, mate.”?
157 and falling.
Down on the dirt road a 1969 model ghost
walks a Dog called Lady.
When they gave her away
It was wrong.
1997, Tim Gadd