My mother, a moon-maker, tells me a story:
of cigarettes on the way to school, short skirts
('cos long legs equals invincibility)
and the pub on the way back;
meeting a flasher, once, when she was on her own
- a media blemish, a man who's now free.
She laughed at him, to stave off danger. Her
laughter would heal anyone, great heaps of it
rolling out of her body and passing
through the Brumby streets.
I can imagine her, the way she was then, like me,
the way I am now.