Australian
Poetry Journal

Issues / Volume 5 Issue 1 , July 2015

Poem

Freight

Anne Elvey

  My ravelled pasts uncoil along the level way I take 
  to Spencer Gulf. The Murray stretches beside me— 
  a diversion unseen in its shell. Its pipeline is like the lizard 
  that warmed itself, under the road-train of the nation. 
  
  Strong curves lie on the verge, ochre and ruddy, hide 
  and hind. The rust of the soil runs in Clare’s wine, the lead  
  of Pirie in the children’s blood. Sheep are the colour of country.  
  At Port Augusta I read that Flinders sailed—until the water 
  
  turned to ground. In his Ranges dry scrub hugs the soil. 
  I hug the road. A kingfisher holds to a dead limb. 
  Three emus pause in bow and peck beside a fence 
  while a raven tastes the blue tongue’s broken flesh.