This Night

The elements encroach. In this order from furthest away I can see: sheet lightning; Balmain; the water of the harbour green today, black now; the apartments wharf; us with our rose and digital camera. He's an architect but he says he photographs experimental music festivals and lingerie models. It's raining softly when I walk to the car, the wood of the boardwalk baked in the day and now damp smells like so many verandahs. It's an opportunity for one of those fragrances: ink, freshlty cut grass, dirt, rain on a wooden verandah at the end of a hot day. Also, wet hot concrete. As a child I said concreek. Around the same time I think I was keeping my clothes in a wardrove. And I remember my wardrove. Matt blue and green stripes that came from almost but not quite mixing the paint.

In Newtown it's raining still but smoky too from the bushfire. Malcolm Turnbull is on the tele using his best Prue and Trude voice to tell us that the drought has come to the city.