Saxe Blue Sky (Thursday Morning) Poem by Pam Brown

the millennium train
whips past
the tollway to the Harbour Bridge
CHANGE GIVEN CHANGE GIVEN AUTO COINS ONLY
in bright orange
against a saxe blue sky.
the gigantic matchsticks sculpture,
one burnt, one phosphorous red and ready,
jutting up
from a closely trimmed mound of couch.
a bronze frieze in capital letters, on the corner
of the NSW Art Gallery —
CHRISTOPHER WREN, (old cosmopolitan),
(Thomas) GAINSBOROUGH —
flashes by,
seventeenth and eighteenth century ghosts,
glimpsed like brief suggestions, or notes,
as I enter the drab tunnel
towards Martin Place
on my way
to advance automation,
to sort a set of bookbinding cards
(discard, edit, or keep,
according, fo course,
to a method)
cards detailed with
pencilled handwriting,
traces of colleagues
now moved on.
I remember most of them,
more, I remember their memos,
circulated notes —
our names listed,
stapled to a corner,
memo read, name ticked, then passed along
to the next name —
pre-email,
and computers then exclusive to data,
the binding card
mimicking book spines,
a card index
the instrument of record.

the train squeals into Redfern
I emerge from the dim light
deep under the city
to see the saxe blue sky
look smoggier,
pale grey-brown on the horizon,
from here, in the inner west,
the way I walk to work,
the block — the aboriginal housing co-operative —
demolished, gone.
another set of glimpses, whisps,
traces of people
now moved on.
on this frosty thursday morning
only a small group of revenants
warming up around
a smoking 44-gallon drum.