THE HUNTED

Macquarie Harbour inlet.

Trees not even a body’s width

and so crammed up the slope

of boggy moss and wiry ferns, with

tussocks not grass but swords that slash.

A bastard country.

And now the dogs are after us.

Unseen birds jeer

from scrofulous trunks.

That one’s a wren!

Oh Christ a home song.

The breakers roar out west

but up this creek

the shadows lie still on water

green and black, peat beneath,

[even the swans are backwards black].

and always the ravens cry defeat.

Onwards dragging, sideways tearing.

Take your choice of death.

ON THE DEATH OF YOUNG JOE

On the death of Young Joe

Last night the rubber fishtailed

despairing graffiti.

The young men sat around the

tankstand, drinking.

Their Blundstones crushed

tinnies underfoot.

Fingers denuded the oval

where squatting on haunches they muttered and

mourned and howled like dingoes,

shattering the smeary silence

of grief with bewildered memories.

Tonight the only sound is

wind in the high gums

and the muted growl of

a V8 way down in the valley.

Even the sky has drawn its veil

in sorrow, the moon is in hiding

and it’s left to the street lights,

bouncing off garbage bins,

to usher Death out of the neighbourhood.

LETTING GO

You lie under the stars,

that glorious swathe

of icy brightness

in the black country night.

Down on the river flat

a beast gives tongue.

If you listen long enough

the mopoke calls

while the water

falls and rushes,

runs and rushes.

And from your house

the light spills forth.

The voices murmur

riverlike, a burst of song

and often laughter.

Do you hear?

Do you feel the clay

beneath our feet?

The crunch of frost

beneath our feet?

The roots of roses

overhead?

You were of the land.

We gave you back

with love for your being.

HINDSIGHT

A Sydney creek.

dancing in old light.

Shallow sand sifts under toes

spiders hide in bleached bark

as we pass ti-tree tight blossom.

My grandfather, sure footed,

splashes into the shadows

seeking old haunts

of Hawkesbury sandstone.

We are hunting oysters.

Having jagged them off the rocks

he will stuff them

into long jars wrapped

in burlap, wedged in a basket;

will carry them triumphant

to his friend, a much younger woman,

while his wife waits

at home

with lemons and bread.

FEAST

I have eaten the city, taken in huge gobfuls

Of wintery lightfall on gray metal rooflines

Sucked out the marrow of tenement houses

And spat on the doorsteps carved deep by past feet.

I have plunged my lips along park benches and lake reeds,

Guzzled black swans under canopies of date palms

Savoured the creamery of frangipani lit gardens

And dined on old bus fumes pumping black in my veins.

My teeth have crunched over pink sandstone shorelines

Slaked down slime oysters drowned in sea brine.

Roving the wharflands my tongue goes riffling through gutters

Slurping on pubspill, licking tar from the street.

When summer arises I hunger for ferries

And gorge on the sails of triangular light.

City of ancestry, city of youth,

I devour my history, carve the corporeal roast.

COUNTRY PUBS

Country pubs are works of art,

rivals to the stony banks and isolated

corrugated halls of prosperous country towns.

Country pubs are frills of lace

cascading down verandahs

to cartwheels at the gates

and convoluted timber posts

holding aloft iron mantillas

which screen the girls scurrying to work

up on the boards.

Country pubs have tiled murals

of flannelled cricketers and rugby men in boxer shorts

or muscled marvels with lantern jaws

sporting gloves beneath the gold leafed

Tooths and Tooheys and Wheatsheaf ales.

And somewhere round their skirts

will be a tunnel leading down

to cooler depths in which the kegs repose.

While kelpies sleep on coir mats around

the Saloon’s door and kids balance on

the silvered rails where once, tired horses waited.

And inside is dim, eye-adjusting light

rarely shafted by the sun

so that the bar retains its shine.

Mahogany and brass and curlique etchings in gilded

glass and row on row of

sea green bottles and thickened thimbles grooved.

While on the counter erect and ready for the tugging

the beer taps glow from constant use.

The sill’s worn dipped by countless feet,

likewise the polished halls off which

a score of wooden doors open into

bind-light rooms, with iron grates and patterned tiles,

ceiling roses too.

An iron bed spread body-bent towards the rug

upon the floor, dulled by the grime of

timber fellers, poorer cockies, richer squatters,

land agents, salesmen of liverfluke pills and

worm dips for sheep, honest travellers and rodeo riders,

circus sharps and country yokels

all just passing through.

Come down to dine. There’s damask

cloths starched and ironed and weighed down

by the silver.

China, thickly white is monogrammed,

a relic of the roaring days.

The tea is real, from man sized pots,

and you can snack on loaves of toast,

slabs of butter, half a pig and a dozen eggs

laid side by side with mountain steaks

and all the taties your mouth can hold.

Through the fly screened doors will push

the maids, hidden in aprons, rushing trays and

yellow cloths to dust the glasses near the water jugs.

Let’s raise our schooners, pots and pints

and have a jug or two.

Let’s bend the elbow, have a nip or just a tot

and follow with a chaser.

We’ll drink the health of country pubs,

pay them homage, give them their dues.

May they stand forever, framed and mounted

on the corners of our land.

CHILDHOOD

Slippery as dreams,

slabs of sunlight

on dusty roads,

skimming willows’

black depths and sitting

on post and rail fences worn

shiny smooth by generations

of squatters’ kids.

Blackberries in perfect

globules of burgundy juice

ooze down sunbrowned chins

to run in purple rivers along

our fingers as we scrabble

to keep footing on the

bramble hugging banks.

While the creeks of time

run coldly from the mountains

of the South

on a patchwork bed

of rounded sandsucked stones.

And the ghost of Harry Pether

sends us pelting past in terror

from the woolshed in the paddock

by the Old Talbingo’s pub.