Brendan Ryan
I walk toward a paddock bordered by cypress trees.
Philip Hodgins is on a tractor harrowing forty acres.
I can’t see his face but I know it is him
methodically going about his business,
Past the final service station
into the green beyond of paddocks
soon to be carved up, quartered,
then watched over by streetlights.
In the post-work haze, nostalgia reigns:
lonely crossroads, abandoned weatherboards,
paddocks stretching down to the sea.
A Slant of Light by Paul Kane & A Tight Circle by Brendan Ryan
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 –
canola’s chemical yellow rises above the fence line
Black Poles laze around a dam, ibis and egrets gliding overhead
wattle, casuarina, eucalypt, cypress, radiata
where the bitumen gives way to gravel
taking you deeper into shadows, ditches
tinder undergrowth of a bush block
While my brother milks
I return to mist drifting up the fence posts.
The night’s sheet slowly evaporating
giving in to day – already a process of action.
Cows backing off the platform
make their way up the track –
the stumps of their tails flicking at flies
they regard me with surprise.