“south of the equator”

In his stanzas, drought has a patient voice,
and flood remembers the laughter it took;
the Southern Cross tilts above kitchen sinks,
over rainwater tanks and
the red‑earthed ache of distance.

He speaks in more than one tongue at once—
colonial clocks, ancestral winds,
digital solitude tymballing cicadas
in the heat between two gum shadows.

Each poem is a map the north never drew,
where grief leans against corrugated walls,
love tastes of river‑mint and dust,
and history carries a sunburn no winter can cure.

Here, at the Antipodes, his ink runs inland and outward,
a tide that answers only to the moon it knows—
southern, salt‑white,
pulling every word toward home.

.