for Adrian, Bonny, Fiona and Lindsay


State-owned water floated,

                                                  a new sky.

Raised floor plans are bones of fish in mud.

Dead trees signpost hushed streets

                                                                lined with rushes.

Concrete steps lead up

                                          to an absence of church.

Ochre struts from a ute chassis, rusted through,

flake off as slabs of poor shale

 				                       or ancient timber.

Fifty years of silt and wash on these spoils

brought them to a dusty sheen

                                                        under drought –

death’s own shining resuscitator.
				                              And when Adaminaby

first rises, memory is a plot of panic.

When the old town and its foundations and cisterns,

chimneys and well-tops surface through air,

the breathy wind is across them,

			                                     it hisses

the topsoil skyward, coarse with rumour.

				             	                            The sun

thrashes at a boat ramp that slopes to more ground,

with its cracked contracted wounds peeling scales.

Drowned trees are stuck waders.

				                             There’s nothing here

that’s not residue. A boy, once lost in town,

now has a useless map in his grey head.