Asleep in the suburbs

Wide awake

in our room angled with shadows,

midnight long gone.

Your breathing laps gently

on some far-off shoreline,

fast asleep.

Outside, in the moonlit treetops,

a boobook calls in couplets,

soft and low.

Now the romancing frogs start up again,

reprising their castanet refrain.

Possums ply the neighbourhood,

trading guttural curses.

Somewhere a dog barks, as though it’s urgent

and soon the hoons arrive to rev and roar,

risking it all along the winding river boulevard.

White noise carries from the freeway,

like the din of a distant beach.

In the wake of the ferrying moon,

a black tide swells –

flooding the freeway,

submerging suburban streetlights,

persuading the hoons to go home

and the neighbourhood ensemble

to disband for the night,

unmooring the long corridors of memory -

lapping here, in a dappled room,

all spent thought cast adrift

on sleep’s silent undertow.