Francis Bede: ‘Two Blokes and the Pickle’

Two Blokes and the Pickle

Heavy raindrops engineered like overripe cantaloupes
hit tin roofs hard,
and a blackened sky
returns irreconcilable after years of unfaithful weather.
Pounding, pummelling rain,
its din of metal guitar spalling from ten stack speakers above,
and arthritic lightning jerks through the poultice of blooming clouds.
It is pouring over outback lands long shod of their fertile pellicle,
the degenerate soils having tramped with air currents,
hot blown over country towns, and then coastal suburbs,
and out to sea;
Soils that ghost the rink style plateau of urban roofs
the colours of rich clays,
that clutch beneath their foundations.
Heavy floods will soon rise,
and waters will spread like the strew of a language’s silent consonants,
across fields and down country streets and into country homes.
A couple of blokes watch from the balcony
of the Sin and Salvation Pub,
and wait there because,
in case of emergencies like this,
the beer flows from tethered winged kegs in the pub’s attic;
and Shagger says to his mate “she’s a bit damp”,
and his mate replies “might be some damage”.
It will rain for many dull days and absent nights,
and disaster is this life’s becoming;
the time of a fortunate nation is perhaps running out,
someone says “she’ll be right mate”.
Loss assessors step into their runabouts,
emergency services muster into full swing,
the landscape’s new character again remoulds
the psyche of the inhabitants who will never leave.

Francis Bede