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NEW SOUTH WALES, WINTER PADDOCKS
Paddocks - cold blue wintery light, rose dust pink sunset, a high full day moon, dead stunted trees-roots that couldn't be ploughed up and dragged away-ploughing the sloshing land, rocks up in chunks, grey boulders and sheep ripping up clods, the hume highway cuts its way through to victoria like a ribbon of steel, either side ploughed into by trucks, gathering ice on the grills, the windscreen, wombat legs, bandied either side, a little trail of blood left dragging along the ground from the tail, the deep mysterious death inland, where ice has shaped the nsw winter paddocks.
Chill - it gently settles into the skin, freezing the bone that aches, distances are long and corella pink, you are dusting a rose with your fingertip, the departure of a pale blue light, as the mountain gullies and granite boulders freeze solid, hold themselves smooth and tight, as though I am the only vulnerable living thing, the edge of a natural point, a position, a place, where the land feels, takes pain upon freezing, I want to endure like rock and wood, but my inner ears sting from cold, in the nights frosty centre, in its long dark heart, soon my eyes are watering.
Homesteads - smoking through their stony chimneys, out in the cold blue eucalypts, too distant from the highway, smoking in the cypress pine, the sheltered bush rock, contained land, working occupants huddling inside, or brave enough to be active, each time I move here, there is another place for the draughts of ice and air to occupy, birds have retired early to rustle up and endure, sheep are huddling together, guarding the overgrown fleece, tuffs of grass, now picture a course of ice that you learn from, stamping out farm trees, creek paths and lessons of frost for plants. |
