Here to this wishful place of echoes
clean with the ring of singing she is
drawn, tight from need of release
to sit quietly down with herself.

Outside, the grunt of car door shut,
a heavy cough of engine, and tyres
slosh into the wet street away
along the easy, worldly escapes.

She remember the stirring of nervous desire,
and is cautious: ‘A man’s love is strictly
a man’s love’, testing each cent of love with her teeth, counting the change.

But here she centres to herself; no longer
her footsteps ringing in hollows of desire,
she rises into the heart of one moment,
seeing herself as a bird  –  something strange.

(published in Wordhord; A Critical Selection of Contemporary Western Australian Poetry. Ed. Dennis Haskel & Hilary Fraser. Fremantle Arts Centre Press)