just past the houses on Avondale Road

into the paddocks

where the speed zone graduates to eighty

and the road can finally inhale

no longer smothered by the Colourbond corset

 

the black memories appear

 

sacred lines etched across gravel skin

                         late-night initiations

for the new houses on their subdivided march

whose windows cannot decipher

the markings

or their place

in the shifting

                         personal geography

 

from a distance

the rubber typography resembles

messy well wishes

bleeding onto the shoulder

                         of a Year 12 uniform

or the shaking words

you struggle to write

in sympathy cards

 

as the curtain closes on the farmland

and the bulldozers

                         carry it away