Fan-tailed, a brown cuckoo dove swoops

across the highway, settling on verge. 

You could it take it as a sign there’s undercurrent

to asphalt, that it’s the world flowing

beneath us. A vinyl-clad demountable demurs 

roadside. Blurred country flips through vignettes

seen or remembered: grass-trees that compete 

with lantana clots rising like a bad dream

from the creek gully; gold mine shafts, caged over 

on rain-shadowed hillside; the open cut mine –

its rail line that bridges the road ahead

& now the road behind.