Frank Corso: ‘The Wimmera’

The Wimmera

Long silences are spent on his tractor,

he’s a poet writing lines in the soil.

Dwells in the vastness, no one bothers him

cultivating stanza after stanza. 

He deciphers autographed cobalt sky,

magpies dip beaks in calligraphy ink.

Their signature call is heard warbling

from tops of gum trees and caps of silos.

Hovering over the widespread harvest

are puffs of clouds decanted of water.

He sees them as filaments of feathers

pressed into an airy supply of quills.

Attending to his golden manuscript,

the farmer peruses bumper season.

Skimming pages are fields of wind-tossed wheat,

the wispy wavy lettering of summer.

There’s a dark side to him, deep-seated dissent,

knows good times are few, murders buoyancy.

In drought this land edits his poetry,

fails him without yield, rain, or birds singing.

Frank Corso

*Wheat area in very flat semi-arid region of Victoria