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

Melbourne Candid Series #1218 Swanston St

 

On Swanston Street, she walks
through a river of passing hours,
headphones sealing a private weather
against the city’s noise.

The traffic lights blink and wait,
faces blur into motion,
but she moves with a measured resolve,
eyes forward, unborrowed.

An illustrated gaze stares from her jumper,
another world layered over this one—
ink and fabric carrying a story
the street will never fully hear.

Wind lifts her hair like a half-spoken thought,
boots meet pavement in quiet defiance,
and for a moment the city bends around her,
letting her pass,
untranslated.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1065

Melbourne Candid Series #1217 Flagstaff Garden

 

In Flagstaff Gardens, beneath a pale afternoon sky,
stillness gathers around a painted face.
White curves cradle shadowed eyes,
not to conceal, but to declare
a quiet becoming.

Hands hover nearby, mid-gesture,
as if the air itself is shaping him,
layer by layer, breath by breath.
The city murmurs beyond the lawn,
but here, time pauses.

Ink crosses skin like memory,
a hoodie soft against ritual paint,
the ordinary and the ceremonial
meeting without apology.

He waits—not passive, not fragile
but steady, offering his profile
to transformation,
while the garden holds its breath
and listens.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1064

Melbourne Candid Series #1216 Flagstaff Garden

 

He stands as if the world were hushed,
Both palms enclosing breath and seed;
Bright metal stills his lifted chest,
While time obeys a measured creed.

Around him murmurs crowd and day,
Yet in his gaze the moment stays
A single rite in open air,
Performed where passing hours fade.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1063

Melbourne Candid Series #1215 Flagstaff Garden

 

She bows where trampled grass lies still,
A crown of feathers cuts the air;
Her gaze is drawn to depths below
Where silence learns the shape of prayer.

The crowd recedes to shadowed blur,
Their modern breath held soft and thin;
In her slow hands, the world grows old,
And ancient rhythms enter in.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1062

Melbourne Candid Series #1214 Flagstaff Garden

 

Beneath the plane trees of Flagstaff’s green,
Where noon stands hushed in silver air,
A dancer lifts his measured limb
And time is held within the square.

Feathers crown his brow with fire,
Painted eyes remember suns
That rose on temples, drums, and dust
Before these lawns and city runs.

A shield of light, a mirrored round,
Catches sky and watching face;
Each step resounds with older ground,
Each pause a vow of measured grace.

Around him sits the modern crowd,
In jackets, lenses, murmured breath;
Yet he stands carved from ritual,
Defying clocks, deferring death.

So art returns where grass is trod,
And strangers learn, though briefly, how
A body speaks what books forget:
That past and present share one now.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1061

Melbourne Candid Series #1213 Flagstaff Garden

 

Within Flagstaff’s green, where ancient echoes stir,
Three women turn in measured, sacred grace;
Their regalia blooms with rhythm, thread, and fur,
Each step a vow time cannot quite erase.

They dance the rite of sun and seasoned ground,
Of maize and wind, of promise dearly kept;
The earth remembers every lifted sound,
Each heel that strikes where ancestors once stepped.

Beside them moves a lone and painted man,
His face in white, a mask of dread and lore;
Eyes dark as night that watches over clan,
A guardian shaped by fear and mythic war.

Not terror, but the threshold he declares
Between the living pulse and spirit’s claim;
His steps command the air, the crowd, the stares,
And teach that awe and reverence are the same.

So in that garden, far from native land,
Old worlds arose at drumbeat’s urgent plea;
Through flesh and cloth and stamp of human hand,
The past stood up and danced itself still free.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1060

Melbourne Candid Series 1212 Flagstaff Garden

 

Beneath the plane trees’ hush in Flagstaff’s square,
A youth stands caught in time’s deliberate pause;
His glasses catch the pale, indifferent air,
While shadow softens feature, line, and cause.

In profile turned, he faces leftward thought,
As though the past had called him by his name;
One hand bears modern fire, so lightly sought,
A glowing screen within a world of shade.

The strapbag rests like ballast at his side,
A pilgrim’s satchel for the urban age,
Where messages and moments coincide
And private futures wait on public page.

Monochrome renders youth both near and far,
Stripped of the colour of immediacy;
He stands a figure etched by light and spar,
Between the now and what he yet may be.

O still-born instant, keep him thus inclined
Half-bound to earth, half-listening to mind.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1059

Melbourne Candid Series #1211 Flagstaff Garden

 

Within Flagstaff’s quiet, leafed embrace
She stands apart from traffic, stone, and haste,
Her face a careful map of ritual grace,
Drawn not for show, but memory’s chaste paste.

White settles on her skin like borrowed bone,
Dark marks bloom where breath and thought reside;
The garden holds its pause, a softened tone,
As if the city listens from outside.

Her earrings swing like circles without end,
Echoes of dances older than this ground;
In measured calm, her stillness seems to mend
The fractured hours that crowd the city’s sound.

No words are spoken, yet the meaning stays:
Here culture walks where office towers rise.
Flagstaff remembers other, deeper days,
And through her face, their quiet truths reprise.

O shaded paths, O lawn and trembling tree,
You frame her not as spectacle, but sign
That even here, in measured modernity,
The ancient heart keeps time with breath and line.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1058 and FACE OFF

Melbourne Candid Series #1210 Lonsdale St

 

Along Lonsdale’s measured lanes he rides,
A muted engine humming time and need;
Steel wheels trace the city’s patient tides
Where lines are drawn for motion, not for speed.

His helmet seals the weather from his face,
A visor holding back the urban glare;
The jacket bears the scuffs of constant pace,
The marks of work repeated everywhere.

Behind him, boxed and bound in canvas square,
Tomorrow’s meals and moments wait their turn;
The city eats, and he must ferry care
From door to door where lights and kettles burn.

No fanfare greets him as he slips between
The kerb and traffic’s unrelenting flow;
Yet Melbourne’s pulse, efficient and unseen,
Moves partly by the miles his tyres know.

O Lonsdale Street, your verses hum and roll
On battery and breath and borrowed time;
In one brief pass, a rider makes you whole
A working line within the city’s rhyme.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1057

Melbourne Candid Series #1209 Lonsdale St

 

Along Lonsdale where the noon light pales,
He walks the narrow margin of the day,
Stone walls to one side, traffic’s distant tales
Unspooling where the city bends away.

The footpath keeps his measured, solitary pace,
A quiet drum beneath his steady stride;
Head bowed not in sorrow but in grace
Of thought absorbed, the world held close inside.

A plastic bag swings low with common needs,
Bread for the night, the ordinary fare;
No anthem here but headphones whispering seeds
Of private worlds no passerby can share.

The city does not pause to learn his name—
It rarely does, and rarely needs to know—
Yet in this frame, unchanged, unnamed, he claims
His moment as the streets continue to flow.

O Lonsdale Street, in monochrome and stone,
You hold a thousand lives like this in trust:
Each step a verse, each passerby alone,
Each day composed of habit, will, and dust.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1056

Melbourne Candid Series #1208 Flagstaff Garden

 

In Flagstaff’s green, she stands in sacred guise,
With relics clasped and eyelids gently drawn;
Her whispered chant ascends the open skies
As measured steps awake the ancient dawn.

Through turning limbs and breath in rhythm bound,
The earth remembers truths too old for speech;
In dance and prayer, the lost are gently found,
And silence learns the language hearts can teach.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1055

Melbourne Candid Series #1207 Flagstaff Garden

 

He strides with death upon his painted face,
Yet life resounds in every measured tread;
Feathers flare, the shield holds time and place,
Where ancient vows by living feet are said.


Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1054

Melbourne Candid Series #1296 Flagstaff Garden

 

He steps where drumbeats braid the air,
A living glyph of bone and flame;
Painted death upon his stare,
Yet pulse and breath deny the name.

Feathers crown the mortal frame,
Silver rings with ritual sound;
Each measured step recalls a claim
The earth remembers, tightly bound.

Not death, but homage does he wear—
A vow the moving body keeps:
That life, once faced with ending’s glare,
Learns deepest truth when memory leaps.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1053 and FACE OFF

Melbourne Candid Series #1295 Flagstaff Garden

 

Beneath the white pavilion’s quiet span,
They stand aligned, their faces turned away,
With shoulders set as ancient rhythms ran
Through stone and fire at break of ritual day.

A crown of feathers breaks the muted air,
Dark plumes like rays from some forgotten sun;
Each quill a memory worn with solemn care,
Of empires lost, yet never truly done.

The metal glints upon the woven breast,
Cold silver shaped by hands that knew the gods;
It bears the weight of oath, of trial, of test,
Of earth once fed by blood and marked by rods.

They do not speak. Their silence holds command.
The past stands breathing in their measured pose.
Time bends, obedient to their stance and hand,
As history in living motion flows.

O watcher, learn what stillness dares to teach:
That roots run deep where footsteps touch the ground;
What ages take away, the body keeps
In dance, the lost are found, the dead resound.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1052

Melbourne Candid Series #1294 Flagstaff Garden

 

She stands in Flagstaff Gardens,
painted bone upon her face,
eyes lowered as if listening
to something buried and old.

Feathers rise from her crown,
counting time in silent stripes.
Metal rests against her skin,
cold, deliberate, ceremonial.

Around her, the crowd blurs
witnesses without names.
Once this ground knew commands;
now it keeps secrets.

She has not moved yet,
but the garden already knows
she will.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1051

Melbourne Candid Series #1293 Flagstaff Garden

 

In Flagstaff Gardens, Melbourne,
on grass worn smooth by time and feet,
the dancer breaks the afternoon open.

Feathers arc from the crown
long, banded quills flung wide,
as if the wind itself were harnessed
and taught to keep formation.
Painted bone and hollowed eyes
fix the face in ritual calm,
death not as ending,
but as pattern and return.

An arm cuts forward, firm and exact,
the rattle clenched like a held heartbeat.
Metal plates flash across the chest,
each piece catching light,
each sound answering movement.
The body bends, advances, commands space
a geometry of step and stamp,
ancient in cadence, precise in force.

Behind, the crowd gathers into blur:
soft hats, folded arms, lifted phones,
modern shapes dissolving
into witness rather than presence.
They stand at the edge of the circle,
quieted by the seriousness of motion.

The garden holds it all
trees steady, paths attentive,
the city paused for a breath.
Once a parade ground, once a place of drills,
now it hosts another discipline:
dance as memory,
dance as declaration,
each movement inscribed briefly
into the air,
then gone.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1050

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

Check out Candid 1049