For months men with coloured stakes have pegged the suburb,

subdivided their way over the hill, toward our hidden place,

this clutch of blackberry. We’re here again, arms smeared
with sour fruit, hands nicked and bloodied from passage

through the bramble. Under our canopy there’s a lull.

Over the hill a dozer sputters diesel; you’ve put sugar 
in their tanks, delivered secret spells with sticky fingers

and your two-stroke tongue. Tricks don’t hold long,

nothing works. They’ll find us, out beyond
their kerbs and cul-de-sacs, gorging on sour berries,

licking the skin from our lips. You’ve stubbed

a midden of butts in silence. I need to act now.
There are leaves to pick from your hair; I kiss

the grease on your neck, your exhaust fume breath

buries the shape of words in my ear. I guide you
to me. Exhale your weight, until we’re side by side,

in the musty dirt, damp on our shoulder blades, rabbit

eyes in the shadows. When we come in from the hills 
our palms cling, sticky with blackberry; backs grass slapped,

pin-pricked with bindis and briars. In the hours

we’ve been gone, they’ve poured cement between stakes, 
mapped our sandstone heart with a concrete tattoo. The footpaths

shimmer; we walk, gravel dust at our ankles, until we find

a place to kneel and cast our hands in wet cement.