Which Evening Is This

Which evening is this,

food descriptions of the sky:

the sun directed upwards to

caramelise the clouds hence

sheets of foamed apricot with

pink grapefruit frosting hung

on the threads two kilometres

above the Broadmeadow rail,

the CountryLink a thin metal

pencil box, windows like old

brown glass dug up beneath

stubborn roots in the garden,

the bottle reading Kruschen

which the first search engine

page replies were salt tablets

for I suppose the gentleman

who built aviaries in his yard

now ours a half century ago.

Hydrate with a salt tablet

beneath your tongue and see

the sky turn from red to white

to blinking universal pauses,

from gap to a gap, flashes to

splashes of descending light,

but which evening is this one

where my son sees the boom

gate rise and fall like the arm

of adherence, of compliance,

or is it the evening in which

everybody is still alive, or is

it the one where only insects

still patrol the bogey skyline.

From positively charged

void to which evening is this

one month compressed years

say yonks when my daughter

and I rode our cargo eBike to

the grocery store for chips, a

pack of the most spicy chilli

danger snacks just borderline

legal, and then we devoured

them and exhaled fire up the

narrow sundown corridors of

Hamilton so our throats could

enact conditions of sky, space,

from black palette come light

to roast the heavens, a

Caspar David Friedrich history

of clouds, a geneaology of the

metaphor projecting up sunset

moonrise vocabularies asking

the question, which evening is

this one dad. Up the motorway

listening to the discography of

The Beatles, at Coolongolook

we pause for a plate of foamed

apricots dappled with a glance

of pink grapefruit frosting, just

enough to get us through until

Maki Moto that night, crashing

into a booth, two bowls, a glass

or maybe a couple more glasses

please, Teresa and I configuring

our postures on arcade cabinets

in that liminal arena bolted onto

this second floor of this cinema

in Port Macquarie, never found

another soul there in our visits,

only the insects from the reeds

across the bay, the observatory,

the sky or maybe a couple more

skies, because which evening is

this particular bracket of fading.

How many years now

since the sun fell all too quickly.

Gravity has gone out of tune, the

sun cannot leave although it has

already departed, its image stuck

in the evening sky like a ghost of

phosphor lacking a luminescence

as you see in computer monitors

with a bad case of burn in, a spot

in the sky that still remains when

night collapses form, what Hegel

used to see at the end of his days,

subject as object, nostalgic father

as time wary son, thinking of the

CountryLink going into a tunnel

that playfully spills the carriages

out into a tumble of daisy pressed

fields at its end, rolling on its back

and panting in the cool.