Ten Hours A Day Painting In The Half Wild Fields
Ten hours a day painting in the half wild fields
at Long Bay, eleven miles outside of Westport
for four and a half years without
seeing another human for months in the winter
except when we drove into Perth every six weeks
for smokes and groceries.
A quarter mile of treacherous driveway,
mud, ice, freezing rain, you had to accelerate
just right, and steadily, to keep the car
from sliding back down the hill.
Sometimes two or three attempts
like a long distance Olympic ski jumper
and you standing at the top of the ninety metre hill
so I didn’t kill you going backwards,
one hand on a shovel
planted in a small grey pyramid of rock salt
like a sign of readiness and ownership
that always made me think
this is what an hourglass must look like
when it finally hits bottom.
Four miles of treacherous dirt road
one car wide
six deaths down and counting
and the schoolbus always coming our way
just as we were
without being able to brake or pass.
And then twenty perilous miles,
a hot knife of anxiety in the back of my neck,
riding the rat snake of black ice
through a gauntlet of frozen road kill
on the back of Sunset Boulevard all the way to Perth.
Coffee at Tinker’s or the Red Fox,
groceries at Loeb’s,
dog kibble and wet food for the cats at Berry’s,
you’d buy something wholly intriguing to an Aquarius
and I’d buy another tool at Canadian Tire
without even knowing what is was for
but always intended to find out and use
because you never know
when you’re living on a farm
twenty-five miles outside of town
when someone who’s come over
to give you hand fixing something,
usually a car,
is going to ask you for something
everything else in the world
depends upon you having
at that one crucial moment
even if you don’t know what it’s for.
Country makes you feel
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poem by Patrick White
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