Chocolate on your breath at the bus-stop

is instant forgetting. In five minutes

Kurri will recede from bus back window.

Maitland will loom too slowly. Hamilton,

Teralba. Soon Redfern, Sydney Central.

Now the 5:31 from Cessnock slides

down the hill, and Rover Motors’ motto

could be Slessor’s: “on time, all the time”:

so says the once-silver lettering now white,

barely so. The shrinking town set atop

two flat hills is a nasty surprise we

no longer live in. We are going home.

I kiss the taste in your mouth. Going home,

away from dickhead rednecks, names unknown.