Two poems
by Kathryn Reese
El Nino in Nambour, 3pm
The storm bird cries. His plea echoes between tin roofs and empty sky.
In weatherboard houses, little kitchens heat electric ovens, boil vegetables and simmer the women who tended them.
Grandma mutters: that bird should shut up. Grandma, tea towel over her shoulder, ready to either dry dishes or flick blowflies that wandered across the counter or the sill of the unscreened Window.
In the little weatherboard houses static-heavy radios tune in to a male voice, indecipherable headlines, and the forecast of more dry.
Grandma mutters advice: the weatherman should shut up.
The storm bird gives up its invocation. Cicada song rises like fever, settling only to rise again.
The heat-hazed horizon dreams mountains of darkening cloud, weatherboard houses blister, magpies gasp, beaks open, gasp like fish in the cruel air. Everything thirsts.
Everything thirsts except the kitchen sink, fed plink-plink-drip from the cracked-washer tap.
Driving Home
Lameroo
We have been chasing the heat shimmer a couple hours and already you are feet-on-the-dashboard restless, splitting open the pack of red frogs and skipping about my playlist. Turn the music down and I will tell you how this white dust landscape once was sea, tell you of the shells crushed and the mineral salt cracked. From this crest, the mallee could be ocean. Treetops, wind-rolled, rise and curl, glisten, as if with moisture.
Ouyen
Sunset blurs watercolour orange, pink and yellow, not just in the west but right across the rim of the horizon. “There is no one else here,” you whisper, afraid. What will happen if we break down, crash? I will tell you that I know this road—but not like this, soaked in Easter moon.
Your restless eyes scan silhouettes, seeking ghosts and kangaroos.
Manangatang
We have pulled into a rest stop, parked between a mallee gum and a paddock of wheat stubble. Here we wait for sleep. Trace the road train’s rumble from one horizon to the other, map its route as it follows the highway’s inexplicable curves—what is there to avoid, out here? If you remember quadratics, plot the road train’s journey. Discern if it matches the stars.
Murrumbidgee
I will point her out when she appears—rather, I will gesture towards a distant scuff of trees, slurring the word “river” to one syllable. We won’t see her water until Hay.
You are still marvelling at “the dry”, sun bleached grass, heavy with seed, saltbush tall and rugged as the ewes that graze upon it.
Crows gather on the fence wire, knowing this abundance brings lambing and migration.
Wirradjuri land
You, reclined, resigned to boredom, report one eagle, six magpies, an army of galahs and zero clouds. Has it ever rained?
I know water here as dusty mirage, as blue graphic on Google’s map. My eyes flick between icon, road, and eucalypt, catch on a reflection: the sun immersed between the trees.
Narrabri
Pilliga is pregnant, I explain. You glut your eyes on trees, mountains and wide overtaking lanes for the uphill run.
Pilliga is pregnant. See how thick she grows, how she glows, how she sways. I want to run my fingers through the sun-bleached lengths that cover her ochre skin.
At the rest stop, I pour coffee. You part the grass with your toe and caress dust
Kathryn Reese is a poet living in Adelaide, South Australia. She is mother of 4, works in medical science and enjoys road trips, long walks and writing groups. Her writing explores themes of nature, spirituality, myth and the possibility of shape shift.