Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Woman Wearing a Hairnet

by
May 2007, no. 291

Woman Wearing a Hairnet

by
May 2007, no. 291

Hooded eyes, eyelashes thinning, she tailgates a semi,
keeping up with him in case she breaks down.
The truckie has her measure in his rear-view mirror –
an old Falcon tracking the loneliness between Horsham and Koroit.
Wide verges, scoria tracks radiating back to chimneyed farmhouses,
the country she passes through steadies her like a needle:
years of croquet, bowls and a Depression habit of not spending.
She sighs for the woman on the truck’s mud flaps
and the boyfriends she could never marry.
Her hands swim around the steering wheel
as a diminishing list of names falls from her lips.
A carrier of stories, the lowdown on brothers and sisters,
she pushes the semi along chipped bitumen
towards her younger brother’s seventieth. From a distance
it is difficult to see what is holding this freighted load,
as if one woman’s memories could keep a truckie honest,
an unlikely duo marrying the district.
She heels the accelerator
and with a flick of the wrist he waves her on.

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.