Midnight

Ke-chuh-ke-chuh.
Tires on tracks,
a nocturnal rhythm that echoes
just ahead at the crossroad
long after the tram has called it a night.
Closer though,
bluestone
flags a perilous route home,
a bump or less, a careless step,
and
fibrous ligaments may fray
as cheap wool, two ply, under only gentle tension.
The result another type of
urban sprawl?
Ke-chuh-ke-chuh.
Only midnight? Really?
Hurry home, the tires order,
hit the steel lids
between the tracks,
as if to keep them firmly closed to shadowy shapes
that may otherwise rise from the pipes below.
A side street away,
no traffic to slow me.
Just keep on stumbling the obstacle-burdened path.
Ke-chuh-ke-chuh.
Auditory companion in the hush-hush.
Done with drinks, with dancing,
I want toast,
burnt, scratchy claws against
the numb grain of my tongue.
To strip the stink of the strip,
disappearing behind,
ke-chuh-ke-chuh,
with every rubber rotation
and swaying stride.
Boozy breath,
sweet late-night treats—
tomatoes and defrosted doners—
shouldn’t be so generously fragrant
in their sensory attack
after a dozen
rounds of ‘cheap’ three-fold-cha-ching sauv-blanc.
Several clicks
and glassy clinks
past sunset,
ke-chuh-ke-chuh,
no tram in sight but still
the depot calls one of us.
Ke-chuh-ke-chuh.
The rails ever-present,
markers on the darkened clock.

Trip advice

A five o’clock start to the morning is a struggle at the best of times; a laborious hurdle that my brain doth protest with contradictorily foggy vigour.

Throw in the prospect of exercise and it’s even less appealing.

Yet there I was, rejecting sleep’s powerful grip to leap from bed before the urban roosters could crow. I was off to my regular group fitness ‘boot camp’ session; only this would not be a regular morning commute.

Midway through my semiconscious schlep, I stumbled upon a rough diamond in the heart of Melbourne: an understated meeting spot that is, I’d soon discover, making quite a mark.

The location? A crossroads of sorts, where east meets west, only to leapfrog north and south in the same sitting: the intersection of Collins and Swanston streets. Or, to be precise, 30 metres east of the intersection in what may be considered ‘jaywalking’ territory, given a J(esse) was walking there at the time.

So at that moment, 5:35am, midway through both my commute and the darkened intersection, I happened upon the petite curiosity: yellow, plastic, gently domed and lying neatly between the traffic lane and the tram tracks, clear for the eye to see.

Perhaps the incline of the road threw me off, or my haste to satisfy a sadistic craving for early-bird pushups. Whatever the reason, morning wasn’t the only thing yet to dawn on me.

My feet stopped, and I was abruptly lifted through the crisp breeze, time momentarily snap-frozen in a Hollywood-esque vortex of limbo. But just as quickly the ‘defrost’ button activated.

And that’s how, with the grace of a 75-kilo feather, I found myself closely inspecting the construction skills of the City of Melbourne’s road engineers.

I didn’t quite nail my landing, the left knee kissing the concrete a nanosecond before the right. It didn’t seem to bother the Russian judge, however; his 9.7 was my strongest score of the competition. Perhaps he too was struggling to see under the muted egg-yolk glow of streetlamps squinting through the Plane trees overhead. But I’ll take what I can get.

Emoji street: The site of my discovery, which bears a striking resemblance to my expression immediately afterwards.

Splayed across the tracks, limbs askew like a chicken on a Sunday rotisserie, I lay just beyond the leering headlights of a tram stopped across the deserted intersection, mercifully out of harm’s, and indignity’s, way.

The venue for my landing was derivative in that popular inner city Melbourne minimalist style: plenty of steel, strong lines, repetitious geometry and concrete (though yet to be polished and thus as gentle as the caress of a cheese grater). The cement surface was unforgiving—which I suppose is the sign of successful concrete installation—and a bold visual contrast to the curved plastic molding that marked the launch of my pre-dawn flight. Innocuous in look, abrasive in nature.

A coffee and several hours short of cognitive function, I nonetheless wasn’t about to roll over and take this lying down. Been there, done that.

I confronted the inanimate figure in yellow, who proved a shrewd, albeit silent, negotiator. We agreed to split ownership of the fault exactly down the middle, at 100 per cent blame to me.

And with that, my knee and ego well beaten, I continued on my way.

Ultimately, like the lukewarm response to a tepid latte, I have mixed feelings about this urban hotspot. I instead recommend its neighbour, just 30 metres down the street. Every two minutes a bright-eyed, blinking green man welcomes you graciously into his asphalted abode, or, turning to his complementary colour, tells you it’s a good time to stop and take in the surrounds in a far less dramatic fashion.

This review also currently features on TripAdvisor.