Melbourne Candid Series #1240 Flagstaff Garden

 

Beneath the canvas eaves of a village fair,

Where pine and stone remember older ways,
A stall stands brief as morning mountain air,
Yet warm with talk that binds the passing days.

The vendor leans, his sleeves rolled to the bone,
Steam ghosting up like breath in winter rain;
His hands have learned the grammar of the stone,
The iron plate, the grain, the patient flame.

Across the counter, finger poised mid-speech,
A traveler weighs desire against his coin;
Between them hangs a moment they both reach
Not trade alone, but something more benign.

Black ink of signs, like banners brushed with care,
Name humble joys: sweet corn, cheese, bread, and heat;
Such words, once spoken, season village air
Where hunger learns that waiting can be sweet.

No bell is rung, no temple drum is struck,
Yet here the everyday reveals its art:
Two lives converge by chance, by work, by luck,
And part again, each carrying the other’s part.

So markets bloom and fade like cherry trees,
Petals of talk and labor briefly sown;
In such small scenes, the village finds its peace
The world made whole where simple hands are shown.

Sony A7RV

FE 50mm f1.2 GM

Check out Candid 1086

Melbourne Candid Series #1239 Flagstaff Garden

 

A chap bears twin barrels, water dark and deep,
Across the street’s long breath he makes his keep.
Flagstaff Garden hums with measured tread,
Where time walks slow and leaves bow overhead.

The iron hoops sing softly as they sway,
A liquid weight that steadies night and day.
Each step a pact with balance, hand and spine,
A craft rehearsed where patience draws the line.

Around him carts and voices surge and part,
Yet stillness gathers in his quiet art.
So moves he on, through Melbourne’s shaded green,
A fleeting scene, yet old as what has been.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1085

Melbourne Candid Series #1238 Flagstaff Garden

 

On Flagstaff grass they gather, hushed and near,
With painted smiles that borrow from the year;
Small skulls in chalk, bright flowers pinned in hair,
A gentle masquerade of grief and care.

The children sit where shadows learn to play,
Their laughter stitched to rites once far away;
Thus life and death in borrowed faces meet,
And innocence makes even endings sweet.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1084 and FACE OFF

Melbourne Candid Series #1237 Flagstaff Garden

 

Along Flagstaff’s lawns, where noonlight drifts and stays,
They walk in quiet, measuring their days.
A carton cradled like a modest truth,
Greens and grain—the earnest fare of youth.

Her sleeve is folded inward, thought held fast,
As if the moment asks to not move past;
He studies leaves and flavors, small, precise,
As though the world were legible in rice.

Behind them trails the blur of other lives,
The practiced solitude the city drives;
Yet here, two shadows overlap the grass,
A private council as the minutes pass.

Garden paths, you learn this daily art:
That love begins in sharing, not in heart
In reading menus, walking side by side,
And letting simple things become the guide.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1083

Melbourne Candid Series1236 Flagstaff Garden

 

Beneath the elms of Flagstaff’s patient green,

Where tramlines sigh and lunch-hour crowds convene,
A moment loosens from the grip of time
Salt, laughter, steam, a pause before the chime.

A paper-wrapped indulgence, raised in jest,
Breaks earnest hunger, breaks the day’s arrest;
His shoulders lean toward warmth not born of sun,
Her smile replies before the words are done.

Around them flows the city’s muted stream,
Footsteps and futures blur like half-formed dream;
Yet here, between the bite and shared regard,
The world grows kind, if only off its guard.

O Flagstaff lawns, you keep such truths in trust:
That joy is brief, informal, and just.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 

Check out Candid 1082

Melbourne Candid Series #1235 Flagstaff Garden

 

In Flagstaff Gardens, beneath the elms' old shade,
Three wanderers in skull-paint and flower-crown parade
A grinning youth with petals for his hair,
A lady one-shouldered, dark and debonair,
And one whose smile breaks wide through painted bone,
All laughing where the living meet the known.They tread the path of marigold and mirth,
Where death is costumed lightly on the earth
No terror here, but jest and fond embrace,
A memento mori worn with easy grace.O fleeting trio, bright against the green,
You teach the hour its truth: to live, be seen,
And greet the end as friend, not foe unseen.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1081 and FACE OFF

Melbourne Candid Series #1234 Flagstaff Garden

 

In Flagstaff’s hush, with painted grace,
A mother bends, the child looks down;
Their hands entwine in measured space,
Where life and death wear floral crown.

Through borrowed masks and gentle art,
Love teaches how the steps begin;
A quiet rite, passed heart to heart,
Where memory holds what time wears thin.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1080

Melbourne Candid Series #1233 Flagstaff Garden

 

Beneath the plane trees’ winter-bare refrain,
He walks where Flagstaff keeps its quiet trust;
A fleeting thought, a pause between the strain,
While time drifts past like leaves dissolved to dust.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1079

Melbourne Candid Series #1232 Flagstaff Garden

 

Beneath Flagstaff’s trees, where old paths bend,
A painted face turns, half-life, half-end.
Bone-white grin and living eyes,
The city pauses; a moment lies.

Steel rails, canvas shade, a borrowed skull
Mirth and mortality share the lull.
Among the leaves and passing sound,
Death is dressed, and life walks round.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1078

Melbourne Candid Series #1231 Flagstaff Garden

 

In Flagstaff’s hush of passing days,
He moves mid-step, half flesh, half sign,
A skull drawn light upon his face,
Death borrowing a mortal line.

A crown of blooms, a lifted phone,
The living world still calls him near;
Between the laugh, the bone, the tone,
He walks where joy and ending peer.

So gardens keep what crowds forget:
That life, well held, is brief, complete
A dance inked once, not finished yet,
Then gone, like footprints in the street.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Check out Candid 1077

Melbourne Candid Series 1230 Flagstaff Garden

 

Beneath bare trees of Flagstaff green,
They stand in chalked and petalled white,
Small skulls that smile where life is seen,
Soft laughter stitched to borrowed night.

Flowers crown both young and old,
Bone and blossom intertwined;
In painted death, the living hold
A gentler truth: we leave, we shine.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Check out Candid 1076

Melbourne Candid Series #1227 Flagstaff Garden

 

In Flagstaff Garden’s tempered light
He turns, a shield against the air;
Feathers arc like frozen flame,
And silence gathers at his stance.

The city blurs to watching eyes,
Its hours loosen, briefly stilled.
Old rhythms press through modern ground,
And grass remembers older feet.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

check out Candid 1073

Melbourne Candid Series #1226 Flagstaff Garden

 

In Flagstaff Garden’s measured green,
He stands where time has folded thin:
A shield of feathers, round and bright,
A painted face of dusk and bone.

The crowd recedes to murmured breath,
As ancient steps reclaim the ground.
Between the trees, the city pauses
And listens to a deeper sound.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1072

Melbourne Candid Series #1225 Flagstaff Garden

 

Beneath Flagstaff’s elms, where the city exhales,
A drumbeat rises through clipped lawns and stone.
Feathers tremble against the patient air,
Shells speak softly with each lifted step.

One foot strikes earth, the other greets the sky
A brief defiance held in muscle and breath.
Painted faces carry borrowed suns,
Old gods walking between lunch hours and trams.

The crowd stands still, as if remembering
That this ground once answered only ceremony.
For a moment, time loosens its modern grip,
And Flagstaff Garden listens, wholly awake.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1071

Melbourne Candid Series #1224 Flagstaff Garden

 

In Flagstaff Garden’s quiet, watched by stone and leaf,
They stand in measured ranks, adorned with borrowed grief.
Feathers pierce the daylight, masks of ash and bone,
Ancient rites rehearsed where city seeds are sown.

A drumbeat lingers faintly on the Melbourne air
Past and present pausing, solemn, brief, and fair.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1070

Melbourne Candid Series #1223 Flagstaff Garden

 

Beneath Flagstaff’s plane trees, in a borrowed age,
They move like echoes freed from stone and page.
Feathers crown the brow, bone-white masks declare
The dance of life with death entwined in air.

Drums speak softly where the grass is worn,
Old worlds awaken in the Melbourne morn.
Between the paths, where past and present meet,
Ritual breathes again on urban feet.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1069

Melbourne Candid Series #1222 Flagstaff Garden

 

Beneath the elms of Flagstaff’s quiet green,
Where iron paths and city breath convene,
A humble cart stands fast against the day,
Its banner worn, yet bold in painted say.

Here hands move swift in practised, patient art,
As if the world were measured by each part:
The folded board, the steam, the passing plate,
The pause between the hunger and its sate.

No throne nor marble marks this common ground,
Yet here the pulse of living may be found.
A coin, a glance, a nod—no words are sworn,
But something older than the park is born.

The vendors stand like figures in a frieze,
Intent, composed, untouched by passing breeze;
While waiting souls, half-lit by noon’s mild glare,
Lift hands as though in secular prayer.

O Flagstaff lawn, you cradle more than rest:
Within your shade, the world is briefly blessed
Where labour, need, and simple grace align,
And daily bread is shared like sacred wine.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1068

Melbourne Candid Series #1221 Flagstaff Garden

 

Along the gravel paths of Flagstaff’s green,
Where summer fairs dissolve in muted sound,
He walks alone, though never quite unseen,
A fixed point while the crowd moves all around.

Dark lenses guard his eyes from open view,
As if the day were brighter than it seems;
His gaze turned inward, thoughtful, stern, and true,
Attentive more to weight than passing gleams.
The checked shirt hangs with workman’s quiet ease,
Plain cloth that knows the language of the day,
Unbothered by the tents, the hum, the breeze,
Or idle talk that drifts and slips away.

Behind him, faces blur to softened shade,
Their gestures half-considered, quickly spent;
They come and go like marks the feet have made
Upon the grass, erased as soon as meant.
Yet he remains, a figure set in pause,
As though the moment asked him to endure
A witness to no spectacle or cause,
But simply to the act of being sure.

Thus Flagstaff Gardens keeps him in its care
Not hero, nor observer raised above,
But one still centre in the breathing air,
Where crowds pass on, and solitude holds love.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1067

Melbourne Candid Series #1220 Flagstaff Garden

 

Within Flagstaff Gardens’ measured green repose,
Where time slows softly on the open lawn,
A lone man stands, while all around him flows
The idle hour of an unhurried dawn.

He lifts his lens as though it were an eye
More patient than the pulse within his hand,
To catch the fleeting truth that passes by
And bind it fast at his quiet command.
The crowd recedes; the background hums and blurs
A distant murmur, casual and kind
While through the glass the present moment stirs,
Briefly obedient to the watching mind.

Behind him, seated low upon the grass,
Two figures share their bread, their drink, their pause;
They speak in gestures moments let slip past,
Unaware they serve a subtler cause.
Their ease becomes the counterpoint of art,
The stillness framing movement, thought, and aim;
For life, unposed, plays always its own part,
And needs no witness calling out its name.

Thus Flagstaff Gardens holds them all at once:
The watcher, watched, the careless, and the keen
A living page where nothing is announced,
Yet everything is quietly seen.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1067

Melbourne Candid Series #1219 Flagstaff Garden

 

Beneath the elms of Flagstaff’s quiet green,
Where Melbourne’s towers soften into air,
They stand—half flesh, half legend—newly seen,
With painted bone and borrowed mortal stare.

The woman wears her roses like a crown,
Dark petals braided through her careful hair;
Her eyes, ringed deep as though the grave looked out,
Hold life intact, alert, and fully there.
Lace sleeves recall a gentler, older age,
When mourning dressed in patience, not in haste,
And grief was stitched with ritual and grace,
Not hidden, hurried, or politely faced.

Beside her stands the man in hat and beard,
His smile a crease time cannot quite erase;
White shirt, black brace, a bloom upon his chest
A gardener of memory and place.
His painted skull does not deny the heart,
But frames it, like a memento made to teach
That love survives the narrowing of breath,
And meaning outlives what words can ever reach.

Before them, small as any human hope,
A child in bones that merely play at death
Licks sugar from a stick, amused, unafraid,
Proving joy needs neither depth nor breadth.
The skull upon his face is only art;
His living pulse corrects the borrowed lie.
Here death is costume, not a closing door,
A story told so life may answer: why.

And Flagstaff Gardens listens, old and kind
Once burial ground, now cradle of the day
Holding the past and present intertwined,
Where ghosts and children learn to share the way.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1066 and FACE OFF