for James Fagan
Out where sun-sweet grasses bat their stalks

at stumps and living trunks of silver gum

slender leaves in susurrating fall of blooded green

and grey, where piney hulks are switching

misty arms to fencing sky and cockatoos
break succour from the scratch of sappy cones

before shrilling departure, whump of wings

and flash of jewelly comb, where jumping jodies

teem cyrillic etchings over littered bark

and dew's unparalleled horizon softens
even raking steel that hunkers idly

by corrugated rounds of wisdom's error

roofless and raw, where treelings bend

as sails to weather's lick and all description

loosens in its scaly bed to fly
uprooted from the facing page of this

encyclopedic echo and assay, my brother

humming for the sake of things and hurling

twigs and lichen stones far into blue

as he imagines reels to catch the crash
of matter's weight in foliage and field.

You sound he says like a bloody angel.

On as cloud comes scudding from hills

toward the coast with metal salt

fizzing upon our tongues, adventure
promised in broken bough and ragged sheer

of wire, riffing on every sighted rook

and keeping step for step to contours learned

by rote or road, wheeling drift of flies

robbing focus as they hug his wake
billowing as smoke in glancing light,

on to cross alchemic ground between

this paddock and the next where diesel

slops from cans and technicolour pesticides

seep colloidal ruin, on as evening's rain
begins to deck the slickening posts

and polish knotted iron enfolding

nominal lines of residence, as startled sheep

retreat in jerky trot to safer quarters

only to start again with bleating stutter
and gallop, on as shadows gather

palming lumps of rock from hand to hand

never stopping neither seeking home

but circling displaced and distant,

ever close, the cool world closing in.