VIEW FROM NORTH MELBOURNE PENTHOUSE 5PM

I know one day time will take me away.
Away like an ambulance out on the street.
Out of my lodgings and out of the world
while things linger on, so quietly housed.
Stove is now empty. No time is passing.
The cooking of food, reduced to a word

on the rice cooker; and "COOK" is the word
in black on white plastic, fading away.
All the old plastic left at word's passing.
Piles of material left on the street.
Death or a breakup or just moving house.
Losing their purpose they enter the world.

It's so like a line, the edge of the world.
It's so like alive, the name and the word.
Names for a building aren't those of houses.
We're not done roaming - we can't stay away.
Two hours from now we'll be down in the street
in the sand mill of pedestrians passing.

But sitting, we look. Buildings too, passing
slowly, so slowly, the speed of the world.
Clocks kept up here will desync with the street.
Books kept up here will desync with our words.
Everything, everything, moving away.
Will we meet again in our father's house?

Below this building, so many houses
that buckle from weight of their residents passing
and leaving their signs 'til they're taken away.
Billboards and house numbers make up the world.
Some keeping on by legislative word,
divisions of time demarcated by street,

though even new facades show the old street.
Heritage doesn't just live in a house.
The winding of roads, the lingering words.
Everything's there, but obscured by the passing
like mountains of sand. We stand on the world
and layers of obscurity hide it away.

Down in the street time never stops passing.
But in the penthouse and roof of the world
we speak as though words will not fade away.