a passing glance to a dry weather only track –

a mystery, like the roads memories rise from

conversations you have to have

 

with the road the school bus went on,

where three footballers were killed on motorbikes

how one road can define an attitude

 

to land, scandals dividing neighbours

local roads becoming stages where jealousies,

differences are played out – to wave or not to wave

 

look aways after church, fence lines cut

and repaired around a kitchen table, dust

catching in the throat the windows wound up

 

stories seeping through – the schools you went to

women defined by maiden names, back roads

connecting cousins, that family who lets their chooks in the house

 

light through a plantation’s façade

the suspension rising and falling with each random thought

the speedo steady as fear of a family death

 

abandoned stockyards, shearing sheds, a colonial farmhouse

real estate on the rise leaving a flock of pelicans behind

where driving 20ks for a can of paint becomes a mission

 

a diversion from the tail-gating highway stare,

those times after shopping in Warrnambool

my brothers and sisters spilling out of the car at the Factory

 

Mum’s sighing gaze as Dad stirs the mechanics –

You Labor shits! a bag of oats weighing us down

on the slow drive back through dairy country

 

weatherboards and poplar driveways, red flags for the calf buyers

on strips of bitumen snaking down to Brucknell Creek,

a canopy of gums overhead, bark peeling in sluggish heat

 

remnants of bush stranded in a paddock of turnips

a Hereford’s fur caught on a barbed wire fence

amongst roadside ferns: fallen branches, beer cans,

 

chip packets, bull ants and places where somebody had a leak

chasing the myth of the back road short cut

farmers see more than they bargain for

 

teenagers leave signature burn outs

and shooters nurse a ‘traveller’ to give each other a hard time

knowing that the road that leads to Laang is a prick of a road

            in winter

¨¨¨

 

through dry stone dairy country, houses set off the road

houses where the Rosary was intoned and The Missions

brought families into a kitchen; embarrassed, polite, reverting

 

to the familiar – kneeling on lino to pray,

whose sons worked in quarries, fought on Friday nights

daughters either married early or left in a hurry

 

like the Warramyea Road dropping down into a gully

or the brief onset of cool from a pine plantation around

            Tank Hill –

a reservoir I shied away from, squashed against the back

            seat window

 

I retreated into myself, the memory of playing kick to kick

            in a paddock

with a bull sniffing at my calves, my cousins breaking up

the road becomes an avenue of associations circling

 

like a sparrow-hawk zeroing in to a patch of grass

the drives dad took us on – the tip, the farms he worked

until geography becomes a matter of memory

 

Saturday mornings with the smell of polished footy boots

on the patched road to Worndoo,

gravel edges unreliable as the images I cling to

 

back roads enclosing us like growth rings on a tree

¨¨¨

 

it is where the grass grows up to the bitumen

that determines your longing as if being closer

to roadside weeds will allow your desires release

 

to dream between saplings, run your fingers

along the curves of the week’s conversations

wondering did they truly describe you: a smile,

 

a raised eyebrow, what you accepted

the absence of desire unsettling like the bump

the road makes over a level crossing

 

the sky released from barriers holds you to the road

hooking around a creek bed, a sudden kiss of gravel

            beneath the tyres

a single lane bridge and two horses either side of the road pining

 

loneliness is what’s killing Australia but I am driving to stay alive

pulling over into soft edges to let a milk tanker pass

I remember the dream of this section of road

 

where bulls were charging people who had stopped to rest

beside a row of pine trees in failing light

now they’ve severed the trees exposing the dream

 

I’ve heard that horses will avoid places where the light shivers

dream places with high magnetic readings like crucifixes

tied to white posts or piles of rock stacked in paddocks –

 

ramshackle cairns pulling you in, interrupting

the sweeping stare the road suddenly widens

as if direction is simply a matter of revelation

¨¨¨

 

why travel the highway when you can take back roads

through paddocks and towns where the General Store and churches

closed long ago and the remnants of butter factories and

            walk-through dairies

 

crumble beside the road like conversations let go,

lives memorialised by signs – Wild Dogs Keep Out

local knowledge, local wars, dips and ridges reflecting a landscape

 

of bitten attitudes towards difference – a woman speaks out

farmers return to their beers, cow shit on the bitumen,

rye grass covering the fence line, the familiarity of trips

 

to the milk bar, nursery, out-paddock, gravel roads owning

            your thoughts

of speeding between she-oaks, their weeping shelter brushing

            your vision

as you drive out of memory, out of necessity, local roads that

            get you there