John Kinsella

Hoodwinked by the flat-lining, inside out Silver lining of every absent cloud, A clear day halo, a vulcanised rout Of dust and eucalypt, diesels and loud Stereos hyping up an eager crowd: Addendum to truck and trailer, it rears Up and contorts, hydraulically proud, Eyes in the back of the head, cobra peers Out into the hills and paddocks: it fears

Less with each scream. Down there –...

Outside, intermitting thunder; habituating      the place of lightning a spectrum flourished      where wire stretched thirty-three years ago,      just broken through – rust;      a pair of massive wedge-tailed eagles flew towards each other then counter-circled,...

Walwalinj silhouette blown sharp          flooded gum overhang a blackly sparkling canker, short shirted birdcall in damp,                     like running the car slow along Station Road to complete a...

Beneath dark mahogany trees, in the stagnant, Humid air, saturated with flies, hang flowering Lianas coiling up from vine stumps, lulling The splendid and quarrelsome parrot, The yellow-backed spider and wild monkeys. Here is where the slayer of oxen and horses, Sinister and weary, returns with measured Steps along the mossy bark of old dead trunks. On he goes, rubbing his muscular arched...

Head down on the desk, he hides tears that force their way out, warping ink of words he can’t read.Isoglosses: smudges of dialect, script across areas of page, title deeds to land his grandfather collated: blocks of mallee, caprock, breakaways, map the farm: vast cleared spaces, fencelines, patches of scrub, irrepressible cairns of rock picked when paddock-making, maintaining: each year...