recurring poem #5

Samuel Wagan Watson : cold storage

bussed it into Mitchell
from out of nowhere
and found it on ice

to the horizon line
a smothering layer of cold political rhetoric
the hopeless arguments of history palpitating
__-gently into the cracks
__-of stoneware earth

hurting is the season here in the bush
and winter is the additive that comes with it,
the storm shutters are up -
every second store closed or having a closing-down sale

the hunger pains of the city end here
the spirits are being sucked away into this gas-pipeline
as the Beast just keeps taking ... taking ... taking ...

black and white struggle to reconcile
slashing their own bloodlines
the kids packed off to the Big Smoke
where all the opportunities now manifest

a rainbow-serpent dormant on cryogenic dreams
chiling over into the landscape
while a secret war is fueled on urban innuendo
as a country-town loses another generation of its young
to the lust of the city

a main street void
____________-of the laughter of its children


Below: Sam Wagan Watson at the Brisbane Writers Festival