An afternoon slides across bitumen
you or me leaning on the window
watching hills with their skin peeled off
and a band of trucks blinking
until the vibrato of a cattle grid
and low rusted heath
three hours of pulling dust
a break at a dry riverbed
where a Rav4 has spent
maybe three days
pressed against a tree
tyres and roof racks taken
still, there are old movie tickets
and fresh bread in the boot
at the turn off is a submarine
half submerged in dirt
it might be a metaphor
but I decide then not to ask
a dead fox next to two small graves
I’ll hear about them later
the first thing you take a photograph of
is the petrol pump at the station
because all things seem intriguing
when left alone in space
up the hill I remember
to stop moving in straight lines
to find gaps between thorn
let grass break off on socks
I thought it might be nice
to read Landscape
to record it up there
on my iPhone four
a week later in Melbourne
someone tells me of rocks
with tops that burn to black
and keep their colour underneath
but I hadn’t turned them over
or held the cool inside my palm
two goats emerge
over the ridge at sunset
and face west for a while
they move away
with the shadow of a cloud
mimicking a wombat hole
paddocks that change colour
slight slopes shift to clay
and one swift strip of orange
reaching across the range.