Misplaced Person—1966

I’m Wes Bamford, a knock-about
Reader’s Digest fan and sherry sipper.

Farmers’ lads, who challenged me in a big ring,
treated marbles like a clash of planets
and made their rules the centre.
I accepted my limits gradually:
scanning the void with my little torch,
and seeking tails of comets.

I humped matter during my strong years
and stacked it with simple logic at Yarrabandai,
and beyond Cargelligo where grain is gambled.

Then I worked for Greasy Stevens, the tractor mender,
who dreamt of retirement paddocks,
while placing wrenches onto empty spaces.
I spent the Thermos and sandwich hour pondering
the universe and Greasy’s rage at a missing spanner.

I quoted from a past Digest which angered Greasy:
Plato saying we should not be anxious over the affairs of men,
and my inclusion of tractor menders.
I sat a little longer in the shade and wondered
what massive grip had released the stars.
I might have asked Greasy, but he wouldn’t understand
the meshing of cogs he hadn’t dreamed of.

On a day dramatic with eclipse, Greasy prompted
my departure, because I glimpsed too long through tree-tops.

I took my Thermos and little torch
and wheeled flour for the aging baker,
who was a calm man.
We’d sit on winter mornings and I’d remember
the weight of grain on my bones at Yarrabandai;
and he’d point to new bread and the way it exceeded
the limits of its tin.

            Just like Plato’s mind, I said—