In this early half of autumn,
with the days falling inwards
into themselves towards the cold
fogs of winter, dreaming
and both barren and cold here,
you turn, at the end, and whisper lines.
The morning light continues,
the clouds in the sky silent
as the breeze that plays with
the grasses on the oval before school;
somewhere, some mother is calling
some toddler staggering under the air.
Cars are passing, their murmurs toneless
refrain that echoes the prevailing void,
and a solitary dog begins
to bark its counterpoint,
but there is no bird here,
no magpie to whistle against the breeze.
I will not whistle up a wind to wipe
as at the windscreens of this scene,
or to take up passing ephemera and chip packets
that loiter in gutters and nature strips,
nor will I summon an early autumn
storm to scour at the paddocks outside of town.
Somewhere, someone is rabbiting.
The teeth of iron, the tufts of fur
crucified on rusting barbed wire,
thinking of these, you may go onwards
and into an unforeseen life,
except for the vagaries of memory.
Schez id
“days falling inwards
into themselves towards the cold
fogs of winter…”
lovely.