Being younger for longer
than he thought, the pleasure
of skipping a stone across
dam water was mis-remembered
from early childhood —
it was a visit back
to plough the fields
during his scrimp-and-save,
hand-to-mouth
out-of-school years
that he recalled. Now,
he was there most days.
Twisted about the verandah post
like long-in-the-tooth lantana,
effusive with purple flowers,
the farm run down
and the animals long gone.
He’d ride a bicycle
into town as if crossing
a tight rope. Since
being taken out
into the bush,
diverging left
on the chalky road
to the cemetery,
forking out into the sticks,
out where car bodies
and bottles were shot up,
he lost his sense
of time. They beat him to a pulp,
and he forgot how to speak.
Words came out garbled.
He knew a language
that sounded right
and grammatical
inside, and he could hear
as they heard it coming out
differently. Is he drunk?
they’d ask. If drinking ponies
and tumblers of sherry,
taken out of his pension,
they’d say he’d had too much.
The town turned away from him:
filth, they’d snarl.
Down amongst the pigs.
So they know the truth, he thought,
and wondered at the euphemy,
the chorus of nay-saying
that seeded the valley,
the cash-crops of marijuana
harvested under uniformed protection,
green garbage bags shiny
as the organs of gutted rabbits — knocked off
out the window
of the paddy wagon:
doctors and cops
self-medicate after long shifts
moving from shade to light,
light to shade, the scales
weighing up the lilting tongue:
how green, how green
is my valley.