Walking West

By and | 1 February 2018

Out across The Lowlands,
drifting with the coal dust
to find
home footing.

Iron girder
railway bridge,
Footscray
high upon the lava ridge.

We reach a tidal canal:
remnant waters ephemeral,
born of floodplains
salt lagoons.
Blue rich.

Then two rivers
lined with tanks,
bluestone beaching
mouth to bank –
their confluence:
deep and wide.

We watch container ships
heavy
hypnotic
glide
(filled with sugar
built on bone mills)
beneath the western gate
that joins
silt to stone.
Brutal snake
in wake
of fertiliser sheds
gabled tight,
flaking pyrite,
furnace rooflines,
(arsenic cinders
hidden infill).
And there is the past flowing again –
saltwater
pushes and pulls
at a manmade bend.

Always there.
Past always there

signals are dark,
the river: a seam,
lights on the ridge are now hidden by
glass and steel.

But I can feel
silt and clay
meeting the bay,
depositing washing
layers.

This will soon be a layer.
I will soon be a layer.

A layer
A layer
A layer

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