EARTH WORKS

Black fingers clutch the icy crag
His gloves are shredded, his clothes wet through
He’s coming home in a body bag

Down in the valley he made the brag
he’d be the first to see the peak view
Black fingers clutch the icy crag

Halfway up, breathless, he started to lag
his legs ton weights, his face grey-blue
He’s coming home in a body bag

When he passed a corpse holding a flag
he realised the damage ego can do
Black fingers clutch the icy crag

They turned up the oxygen, carried his swag
but his speech was slurred. It was then they knew
he’d be coming home in a body bag

The highest mountain, the hardest drag
only existed for him to subdue
Black fingers clutch the icy crag
He’s coming home in a body bag

The bedclothes soiled
no hands held
no goodbyes

like a murderer
you waited
for your own execution

until your children
grandchildren
were far away

you persuaded
the doctor
(what did you say?

you wouldn’t live
to be repellent
lose control?)

and your mind’s
sharpness
made its last cut

you wept
(though it was forbidden)
in your husband’s arms

that night
no morning

your body
removed in plywood box
carried in a ute

delivered
burnt
and dispersed

in unmarked
soil –
all over

before the animal howl
of our father,
our childish wails.

Bodiless
you fell
unstopped

for thirty years
until this year
this soil

weeping
I hold it
In my hands now

Rain clouds on bypass.

Leaning lower this year
the mulberry tree
braces itself
to do it all again.

On the development block
first casualties
of the bulldozer:
crabapple and wistaria.

Rock-fall
in the cutting shows
the Messmate roots
delving deeper.

Road duplication:
grove of paperbacks
cleared in a night.
Power substation exposed.

Ancient hoon in Volvo
cruises past
speakers blasting ‘Spring’
from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Rain clouds on bypass again