We’re 136 km apart
you measured
exactly.
Category Archives: road poem
hill end
you said that metaphors are
for the weak-minded
i counted the cracks
in the windscreen
of our hire car
a landscape
riveted by insect carcasses
powdered
with a film of earth so red
it leaves the taste of rust
in our mouths.
we are children again
melting into the back seat,
the windows rolled down
and i tune the radio
to the frequency of
powerlines and rabbit fences,
the perfect broadcast
for a journey that
starts out with a promise
but quickly becomes
interminable.
it is the fundamental law
of movement
– of course –
to be always not quite there,
and not quite here.
in fact,
the further you follow
the thin white line
the faster
it disappears.
you wanted deliverance
but instead we came
to a ghost town
“home!”
“let me go home!”
some where
the landscape moves so quickly it
interlaces
and you tell me that
this is how you see through time.
i concentrate, staring out the window,
colour pixels
rendered in rose quartz
and honey ant yellow—
those mineral shades that
are always part-way
through some kind of chemical reaction, alchemy.
i let my gaze become unfixed and
think about “continuity”…
our car is always
a movie camera
and each window
the perfect frame.
on this road
there is no beginning and end
and beginning and end,
only the part in the middle,
the part
happening now.
inter-change
the western motorway &
simon & garfunkel
we had herbal concoctions
to last us a lifetime
a desk job
an endless time-sheet
and sick days to spare
we worked out the odds
and went the way
of the lighthorse
***
daylight moon
a daylight moon
my foot to the floor
you were tall
and eternal
and i was
falling asleep
at the wheel
5 roadside shrines
we passed 5
roadside shrines
in an hour
i felt the highway
tear a way like a page
every word written
was whispered
and there was nothing
paul kelly could tell us
that we didn’t already know.
i was watching all those things
which are quick,
become things which are
slow.