Late Summer Fires
The paddocks shave black with a foam of smoke that stays, welling out of red-black wounds. In the white of a drought this happens. The hardcourt game. Logs that fume are mostly cattle, inverted, stubby. Tree stumps are kilns. Walloped, wiped, hand-pumped, even this day rolls over, slowly. At dusk, a family drives sheep out through the yellow of the Aboriginal flag.
Late Summer Fires - meaning Summary
Drought and Scorched Land
The poem depicts late-summer fires across drought-stricken rural Australia. Smoke and blackened paddocks, charred stumps and inverted cattle convey a landscape altered by heat and burning. Despite damage, quotidian pastoral life persists: the last image of a family driving sheep through the yellow of the Aboriginal flag links labor and livelihood to national and cultural presence within an altered environment. The tone is observant and quietly stark.
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