There's a butterfly on my finger. I catch it out of the corner of my eye as punctuation to the sentence of the stripes. I create myself each day wondering what it would be like to exist in the green canopy at my eye level. I hover in the evenings and swoop for days. The second half of my life? After interval? Read now with hunger. Will we ever know enough stories?

Cricketers in the grassy cauldron to my right make it summer. Like the summer in a boat shed over a still backwater. I'm sitting in the back of a Ford Falcon and Norman May is on the radio. I'm sitting in the same Ford Falcon outside the Rutherford shops. Border has not many balls left and fewer batting partners. Maybe Thommo's already there at the crease with him. The next day the front page shows him under a one-word headline Pressure! We know what they mean, what they're evoking. Billy Joel has taught us how to shout it. I'm fishing off the mooring on New Year's Eve and we're dancing to Neil Diamond drifting from the flats up the road.

All this is broken by slapping, slapping closer behind on the road. A big feet boy running away, looking back over his shoulder. Then a girl with no shoes. She's wearing a black silky cape that flys behind her as she tries to catch up to him. Red flashing underneath. It's morning. No one expects barefoot super heroes emerging from the shade by the colleges. He's carrying a piece of paper and pointing her in the right direction. It's away from the cricketers, the right direction.