The leaves of gum trees just before the sunrise
could have been cut out of black paper
using nail scissors,
except that, if you look closely,
you see that they drift,
ever so gently,
in the chill of the morning...
gently sway like soft and silent tassels
hung from the throat of a plodding animal
that is the day's new light.

What giggling children are they
who toss the parachute of the day, playing:
Evie-ivie-over, a pocket full of clover...
with the surface of the sea,
so that it balloons in crinkled waves and troughs
glossy as silk?

What children are they that play offstage
while the heavenly backdrop of the sunrise lights up
behind the shadow-puppets of eucalypt and tea-tree?
I feel their laughter and their pacing little hearts,
but I can't see those children,
can't hear their giggles or whispers,
but can feel the rising of their thrill
as the orangeade of the horizon
becomes sweeter and more citrus,

and the baby boy blue of the sky
becomes bluer and more porcelain,
and the merging of the two,
a seeping of watercolour paints:
the jam-jar wherein the children
wash their brushes merging
the blue of the sky and the orange of the horizon
into a greenish invention
that only those excited children
could come up with.