Bennelong's Blues

You’re here again, old friend. You strut around like a ragtag redcoat bellhop, glance up for a shooting star & its woe, & wander in & out the cove you rendezvoused with Governor Phillip after Wil-le-me-ring speared him beside a beached whale. We’ve known each other for years. You’re unchanged. But me, old scapegoat, I never knew I was so damn happy when we first met. Each memory returns like heartbreak’s boomerang. You didn’t tell me you were a scout, a bone pointer, a spy, someone to stand between new faces & gods. I didn’t know your other four ceremonial names, hero in clownish clothes, till another dead man whispered into my ear.