for Tracy
A bit of there is stuck in me here:
a jag of wire, hopping mice plunging
into the grass swirl about the base
of an acacia: the t-bar where gravel
meets bitumen and takes us anywhere.
It’s a lever for dust days out of summer
and a night folding between house
and mountain. Don’t worry if it’s
called a hill by the citizens
of semi-distant towns: its field
of influence is to do with more
than the marrow-altering charge
of antennae and dishes, the airforce
getting their shotgun-alley thrills,
white gums prayers gripping with fright.
It’s more than this, it’s you there
between the fences, and the aloneness
of birds among the stresses: those little
Johnny Winters, filling space outside
the windows: particle accelerators,
this air that’ll support their weight.