Russell Erwin: Yeoval 16-K

Yeoval 16-K

(for Brab)

Three shorts and one long,

or was that 16-D?

What was yours? They all could tell

who was ringing simply by the way

the handle had been rung, wrung.

“That’s the Vaughan’s,

he must be in for the evening.”

That fibro and masonite kitchen,

single man’s quarters, horse gear on the verandah,

marking pliers on the kitchen table,

The Pastoral Review stacked in a corner.

A skin away, the frost and the stars;

each season with its own perfume: musk-damp

thick as a rug in the hollow below the house,

frogs gargling, viscous-bubbling, like a mud pool;

wethers nosing along the fence, shifting, shifting

through the night. Spring, whether it did or not,

—its over-the-top, breakout-of-winter way or in a bob-tail fizzle;

wet summers like a unexpected Christmas gift;

the wait, the wait for the autumn break; accepting

what it meant when it didn’t. At first, “a bit dry”,

then as drought—as wearing as a vigil over a child,

its rhythmless measure, its tempo your character.

Ironbark in blossom, the crucifying burr,

the flooded creek shining like metal,

surprising in its crescent like a smile.

Then we’d notice there weren’t any rings.

The line down—a tin insulator jammed into a tree

worked loose or a lightning strike—we’d walk

almost all the way to the Wellington–Parkes road,

through the little histories of that district

and prop the bellied line up. And among the glitter

of long-necks flung by shearers after a week out there,

or what boys, usually immortal, blind after a B&S,

had showered, writing-off a new ute,

finding a pink jumpsuit, in its tissue paper,

and on the card, just made out “Sorry, I …” and left it,

curled around its story.

This single wire threaded a district, rung it

with voices—the unalterable fact of prices,

the gossip, a young wife’s anxious chat,

fire out in the hills, “Will get you to come

and shift those ewes. No hurry.”

It felt good coming home.

That night, the line we’d repaired tinkled

in its code. Ringing long, short, long.

That wire we’d held in our hands

would sing the birth of your daughters,

and one Sunday morning, a world wrung

empty—your wife, their young mother, dead.

This line ringing: long, long, too short, too long.

Russell Erwin