all day on the kitchen bench where I left it the glass of water with a slice of lemon in it hurtles
through a medium with which I am not yet familiar
and all night
this morning when we woke I said I'll get in the shower and nearly said the bath
which took me back to when we lived in Edith Creek 35 years ago on tank water and we only had a bath
with a few centimetres of water to slip around in nice though to start the day dancing on your back
some winter mornings I had to push the car to start it on the flat road past the dairy feet sliding on frost the last cows still complaining
this memory so real I nearly slid back there to repeat those years and not keep hurtling
through this medium with which I am not yet familiar
when I was 13 the chassis of the radio I was building bent like the wing of an angel under duress the valves were time machines, resistors soldiers my messy soldering held them together
while the Voice of America boomed and the Voice of the Andes and various Victor Romeos their confident ham arcana crackling comfort for a boy who looked at a dial
I knew their sheds and basements with racks of gear and the underscoring 50 Hertz hum they talked about their kids and caravans tracked sputniks listened in to police and Yanks on military frequencies in a medium
with which I'm still not familiar though I did discover Bach on three LPs and though I thought I knew it for a while St Matthew's Passion
did not unlock it like I'd hoped