I wish they wouldn’t bolt like that:

the wallabies that also take tenuous

place on the block. But soon as I’m out

and wandering wide of the shack’s cleared margin, crackling

twigs and dry leaves only blind feet would,

I’ll shock the solar doze of one,

whose mares I spark and set alight

to firetailed crashing flight through bracken –

rarely more than glimpses of rusty grey –

for anything else at breakneck,

anywhere else but me.

                                        (Me some scorched

remainder, unquivering like the scrub,

left to worry the hours of water, rue

the kilowatts of grass to reach takeoff.)
For even after five years down here –

carefulling steps, averting eyes and clearly

slipping through myriad human cracks –

I still look, walk, smell like a man,

like one of them. What’s to say I won’t

likewise blind with bright lights,

start brandishing gun and dog, reduce

this bush-block I rent to another

sheepless paddock stripped of cover?

We can probably tell I won’t. But try

telling them that: wishing words up

and over a species barrier.