(after John Forbes)

last time i lived here i was working the
wheat bins out at salmon gums that’s where
nana grew up before boarding school before

perth but i was never a farm kid only a
townie two months my job was to give
hand signals to truckies when to brake when

to crack and lift trailer watch grain rain
down into grid auger pumps onto belt up to
stacker and rain into bulkhead forming

nice golden Peaks slow days out on
the grid i would for breakfast eat a
handful of dexies and spend the day

picking handfuls of H2 Wheat from side of
stack and sift through for individual Heads of
Barley then set the Barley Heads out in Lines

of Ten on the Gravel and then when i got to Ten
Lines of Ten Heads i would pick the Hundred
Heads up again one by one and throw them

all back into the bulkhead yeah i went
fucking crazy that summer spent
most of my time sitting cross-legged on the

Gravel most of my paycheck drinking
blue lagoon UDLs at the pub with
the boys from grass patch and

flirting with the truck drivers not to
fuck them but because only the
favourite cbh girls would get

christmas presents at the
end of the harvest.