“How are you Mum? You’re in the yard no doubt?”
My daughter phoning again, she picks out
the chattering calls of lorikeets free
to filter through my oleander tree;
clambering about the dendritic branches,
burying their beaks in the flowering tranches.

The seasons come and go; now dull and grey
along gnarled stems white fungus comes to lay.
The birds are gone, the footprints dank and old,
the paving stones cobwebbed in skeins of mould.
There is a tree that sits – alone somehow.
“Hello? What?” Who is it that calls me now?