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
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
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
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
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
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
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
