Robert Verdon, #274, Hill Corner Discovery

standing in a tree gazing out at the hazy rooftops

the quiet child had finally escaped the others

the plane tree with smooth spreading branches

yet leaves enough to keep a climber invisible

there is our house

there is the Posselt’s

there is a corner of Red Hill

so quiet at three or four storeys above the dull

nursery lowness of the bush-beset capital that

it was possible at last to feel yourself think

it was all going somewhere better than decay

— distant wind a drum roll on temple blocks —

at ten years old, and three in the afternoon.