of cognition, and the strobe of people’s smiles
and grimaces a resetting of old associations. This
is the show where my family features large in displays,
winning firsts and seconds across numerous categories,
judging others. But in the seat of the Sizzler, my son

beside me fighting centrifugal centripetal contradictions
of presence, waving to a cousin whom he can see but
I can’t, I fixate on eucalypts I know too well, the upper
third of the painting of my world passing before
my eyes, a landscape shot of spin in which our

portraits unwind and rewind, and the best sheaf
of oats, the best sheaf of barley (I worship its votive
neatness when seed’s fully set), and best sheaf of wheat
though a warning from the judges on the runner-up
that insect damage might affect the final outcome.

O glorious inflorescence – sets of perfect pedicels,
O glorious fertilizer company with its cards on the table,
sponsors and protectors of the temple, offering to help
bring troubled farmers up to speed, and outside in spring
sunshine the latest Case tractors and info about headers

too large to squeeze into the showgrounds, maybe?
But spinning on the florets of the Sizzler, I make patterns
from the canopies and upper branches of the eucalypts
whose species names I can turn into anagrams,
but now let go of within the empyrean of colony

refusing to accept its decline. The speakers positioned
equidistant about the diameter of my cascading epiphany
pump out dance music I could never dance to, but the beats
time with impact each time round, inside out, and I know
the summer coming will be the burning heartbeat

of volatile eucalypt oil, this town always conscious
of summers tipping over into the cauldron, and each
season being a brink into harrowing, an agriculture
of a way so new no amount of learnt behaviours
will keep furrows and windrows in alignment.

As the Sizzler slows down the eucalypts revert.

John Kinsella

John Kinsella’s books include the three-volume Graphology Poems 1995–2015 (2016).