For Two Now Captive of That Moment

Yesterday, Sunday, a lazy day for an easy drive

out over the smoke-blue haze of a tablelands autumn

until a flash of headlights broke the spell to tell us

an accident so bad, up ahead, we’d better find another way.

Working the gravel of another route, among

the poplar-golds, their plumes in spilling cascades,

a quiet, sober riot of praise, the hessian-brown

of last season’s grasses, the noiseless sheep,

how could one not think of what now was fact

on that other road? The miscalculation, the bewildering instant,

then the grievous, unalterable invasion. That somewhere

there, just like that, a sky had shattered and rained

tears of glass. There, among the glitter life was undressing,

slipping from a life. Already, minutes had thickened,

one on one, like the drift of a poplar’s falling leaves.

Already a fact was growing older and harder

among the parts of a cooling machine

and spilt fuel spiked and sickened the immediate air.

Driving back today I dread finding where

it occurred: was it at the long sweeping bend

where the brown falcon sits and surveys,

or the tight corner at the bridge? Or up the hill,

that bit the Council needs to mend? Was that it, there?

Or there? That loose gravel splayed like a fan?

No marks of tyres scoring rubber, no parts untidy as litter.

Not a thing.

The brown falcon lifts from its post,

lifts up, then is lost somewhere

in the chilled blue. The valley

clamped in silence, aches.

Soon after, a driver in a ute,

his dogs lapping the wind,

and he raises an open palm

from the wheel in an easy, matter-of-fact salute

as he passes, heading down that way.