Edgeless

My young cat, Django, somehow got himself onto the edge of the water-tank above the airing cupboard, yesterday, and might have fallen in, inextricably, and drowned, had we not coaxed him down. The worrying thing, of course, being the idea that he might have done it some time when there was no one around. Cue much faffing around with wood and hardboard and hammer and nails to close the gap he’d gone through. Cue also this poem, by the Australian poet Les Murray, The Edgeless:

"Floodwater from remote rains has spread out
of the riverine scrub, resuming its mirages.
Mostly shallow, mild water
it ties its hidden drowning strains
taut around odd trees, in that low forest
whose skinny shade turns the water taupe. Nests float
and the vaster flat shine is cobbled at wave-shadow points
with little brown melons, just starting to smell rank.

The local station manager , his eyes
still squinting from the greenest green on the place,
the computer screen, strolls out of his office
onto the verandah. Tiny native bees
who fly standing up, like angels, shimmer the garden.
His wife points out their dog Boxer,
pads slipping, tongue slipping out , nails
catching in unseen lurch mineshafts, gamely
teetering along the round top rail of the killing yard.

Where does talk come from? The two ask each other
over teacups. – From the same place as the world.
We have got the word and we don’t understand it.
It is like too much. – So we made up a word of our own
as much like nothing else as possible
and gave it to the machines. It made them grow –
And now we can’t see the limits of that word either.

Come down off there, Boxer! Who put you up there?"