habitually heading for the river
its overlaying branches, and this morning
light dispersing shadows, loosening memories,
arguments

running like fissures
through how it feels to walk the paddocks –
found in things, images that linger for days
like the way moss hangs

in a water trough
and the semi-circles of scalloped mud
surrounding it.
Wind picks up

and my skin begins to prickle
at the bank of ferns
where my father almost stood on a snake
trying to chase a cow back across the swollen river.

Imitating the voice of its newborn calf
I baaed at the mother whose ears
pricked up as she stumbled around tussocks
and my father’s swearing.

Somehow the connection held
and the cow swam back to the calf
sniffed her, and like an aged couple
they hobbled off as if they had never been apart.

Two ducks glide down
braking over river shadows, their feet
pushing forward against air, against time
like a memory asserting itself, found

flung out. Sounds carry for miles –
a crow can dominate sixty acres
and closer, the incessant buzzing of flies
builds like a welter around my temples.

Enough to send you round the twist
until wind rushes through the river flats
scooping leaves, bending rye grass,
a thistle shivers.

Fenced off for a breather
the paddock has been allowed to get away.
An electrified tape strung across the track
shapes routine. Cows follow their noses.

Their tracks no more than a foot wide
give direction like a parent’s voice
around the boundary line at the footy,
they are also enough to stumble through.

Even flat terrain has its ruts
hoof-scrapes and pot holes that become a part of you
like the defiant stance of a cow
eyeing me off, wondering

never quite trusting. Something uneasy
as a farmer’s silence at the sale yards
passes between us. It seems enough to know
what my brother doesn’t need to explain.