Ashfield kitchen window

The white wall behind the laundry line
melts into a bright, blank space
brewed in early hungover sun 
and laced with fragile shadows
of a leafless tree smothered with ivy,
through the kitchen window.

the lightness tingles in the unslept red 
fractures of the under eye 
veins that remind you 
of what you won’t remember, 
the residual heat, slow and soft, 
in sticky circles left from glasses on tables.

the gentle discomfort
melts away, though, 
in the blue stillness and thumbprint smudges
of clouds, and the ivy-smothered tree,
and the damp sweet smell 
of warm mounds of cut grass 
in Ashfield park.

the clouds are a little vague, 
like the cotton in our heads, 
wilting over the polychrome red brick, 
of inner-west blocks and their stubborn lawns
(the modest old Sydney postcard)
they fade at the edges into blue,
blooming and sun drenched, 
in yellows and gold, 
like the linoleum floor.

And with the little clinking spoon 
stirring instant coffee granules
into lukewarm milk for us,
and then the hanging of laundry,
and in the slowness of it all, 
the clouds sigh with us.
The wonderfully banal.