Sonnet

by William Fox 

Walking the back streets of beach towns,
how often do holiday houses get robbed?
is all I would think to ask the local cops.
I like visiting most in the mists of winter,
when the fish & chip shop runs a scant trade
for brunching carpenters and beneficent locals,
out to keep a parent from the school afloat,
and FOR LEASE signs start getting superglued
where old milk bars and general stores
have given up the ghost at being galleries.
The bypass was a disaster for this joint,
a heavy man says when I get to the newsagent,
plonking a goldie on the vacant counter
and grunting his newspaper out the door.

William Fox is a poet from Melbourne. His work has appeared before in places like Meanjin, Overland, Island, Southerly, Stilts, and the Best Australian Poems series of books. He completed a PhD on 1960/70s Australian poetics at Melbourne Uni in 2007.