GREG McLAREN
Windfall after Caroline Caddy
1 It begins somewhere else, the drought that floats on the blue length of seasons. These roads are empty, they harvest silence from stretched and fenced-in crops between breath from inland and the coast, far-off and flashing like a storm. Beside the deserted cottage – is it? – the water tank’s ribs build barred shade across water’s safe house. The country here is its own almanac, illustrated, legible, plain, pages always flipped halfway to something – not reward, or demand; fitful, itself, nothing else.
2 Drought is here from inland,
erasing its own marks. Is it autumn? winter? Roads harvest distance – what might be crops breathe the soil’s dark water. The iron roof – pages of a calendar, or flapping like a beggar’s frock.
3 Rainbow lorikeets from below – bright, upturned chevrons. Winter is a dying, warmth dripping from your bones in the stiff sunshine. You drive hours, then, to pass by your old house where the dog was, decades behind, and died. This is the sweetest birth, with you, this new thing. We slide so near
the past soft and ancient now,
through red shift, blue shift: never still.