Melbourne Candid Series #1292 Flagstaff Garden

 

Beneath the old elms of Flagstaff Gardens,
where paths remember boots and decades,
they stand in still procession
faces pale as carved stone,
eyes lowered, solemn as bells before a toll.

Feathers rise from their crowns
like disciplined flames,
striped quills fanning the air,
catching the light that slips through branches.
Metal glints at brow and shoulder,
ornamented, deliberate, heavy with meaning.

Their painted faces speak without mouths:
circles for time, lines for fate,
flowers and bones intertwined.
No smile breaks the ritual calm;
each step is measured, each breath held
as though the garden itself were listening.

Behind them, the city softens
trees blur the noise,
history leans in quietly.
Once this ground watched soldiers drill,
now it bears witness to ceremony,
to borrowed myths and earnest reverence.

In black and white the moment settles:
not spectacle, but pause;
not performance, but presence.
Among lawns, monuments, and passing strangers,
they move like a memory made visible,
ancient in posture,
temporary as the afternoon light.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

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