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Sport 41: 2013
Miro Bilbrough — Birthday
Miro Bilbrough
Birthday
1. Bed talk
Goes like this:
Your two eyes look different.
From what?
From each other.
How?
One looks empty and stunned, the other, fearing the worst.
You laugh. I admire your resilience.
2. Tomorrow
Tonight I offer you an apricot coffin for lunch tomorrow.
I don’t mean muffin either
but scone. Where did that come from?
3. Urban Dog Grrrooming
There’s an aged kelpie cross having her coat
blow-dried in the back of a van on Wardell.
Thin pins planted wide as ballast against
the candy-coutured groomer’s attentions
she flicks her eyes over the fixtures in a
just-passing-the-time manner in that
at-the-hairdresser-zone.
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Ennui is palpable,
a thicker, muggier air pocket
as I walk by carrying your birthday present
in a brown paper bag
my gaze a query.
She returns the barest
of looks as if to say
Not now!
Can’t you see I’m busy?
4. Spring
In the park fathers are photographing their young.
Postings spring like new grass.
The birds are just as broody, the difference is
they don’t give a damn about Facebook.
It’s a relief to see so many lives go by
undocumented.
You borrow a tall ladder
and dam up the guttering where the mynas
are preparing their nest.
A parent turns up with a leaf in its beak and is
locked out. You can see the Captain Haddock-like
sweat marks (Blistering barnacles!) radiating from its brain.
Later you miss the car alarm of myna-bird speech.
Just not at 5 am.