SUMMER POETRY SPECIAL

★ ★ ★ ★

TAMS FLETCHER

Demon’s Ridge

Beyond the Devil’s Signpost
On that ridge that lies ahead,
Stockman drovered cattle
up from the river bed to Consuelo.

River blue gum and ironbark.

Ants keep those paths now
Keep them rocky bare—
Buckland basalt,
Jurassic sandstone—bright
In the midday glare.

But the ghostly gums stand not white
Nor pale against the sky.
Blackened fingers strain
Where the carrion birds fly.

The half-cremated await burial
By forgotten winter winds.

The trees still burn on the mountain
where the currawong sings.

2004 Mermaid Beach

We sat out on the bitumen drive
and drank cheap cold beers
in the morning.

Facing the six lane highway
and the white trash at the other end of the block
(where that old mister used to live)
and
“Woody’s Auto Electrics”
– all that is left of a long-gone store.

We say to passers-by,
From my gran’s 1970s deck chairs,
“It will disappear,
if we don’t keep watching…”