I see the lonely cattle graze
under the ghost white gums.
I see the power-lines,
the patchwork sheds,
pieces
of the burnt down church.

I hear the cries of the galahs
four thousand feet above my head.
I hear their wings,
their divine tools of escape,
beat against the hard air.

I smell the red dust
desperate for an inch of rain.
I smell the sweet, musty petrol,
I smell him; half blood, half sweat
and all silence.

I feel the broken fence posts
splintering beneath my palms.
I feel the dead weeds between my fingers,
too tired to keep living
under the midday sun.

I taste the mud,
the dread,
the words left unsaid.
It tastes like hell, I’ll say that much.

And as he hammered his father’s father’s words into the ground,

time seemed to slip into the distant horizon

and the ute, crushed in half, sank deeper into Eagle Creek.