Is there anything more fucked
than a poem,
when all Croajingalong
has burnt, inkblot on the map
of child heart, that great black banksia
we feared as wicked,
a thousand-socket
resin candelabra,
the dune plovers who swooped us
year upon year,
limp tumble-dried mops,
shrunk-skin goannas
just the sack of that skin now, soot-hazed.
Ten days the line of fire
on the government map sits
two pixels from Cann River, the old pub where the timber men
glare if you come in the front bar,
bumper stickers ‘Fertilise the bush: bulldoze a greenie’,
it is the right of any man to be an idiot and yet not burn alive
or else what’s my excuse,
dry sandwiches bitter coffee in the café, no salt
on the chips at the servo,
god I don’t believe in
save them, my feelings booming
pointless in space please
save them.

Read the rest of Overland 244

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