Poetry from Agitation Hill & Brendan Ryan

Feldspar

In a dark light, edges of the granite
begin to shine. A breeze is rocking boats
but the blue gums are barely moving.

Through the lounge window, the mountain
looks back at me framed by how I’ve been
sizing up mountains since I was a child –

of being chased by shadows
inching across paddocks like spilt ink.
The light shifts and the pink hue of feldspar

catches my eye, reminding me
it is not parents who change but the way
we see them age, sometimes uncomfortably.

Sometimes there is only time to think
when my body is in motion, falling into a rhythm
of words, stubbing my toe on tree roots

the swaying farmer’s walk. I trudge on behind you
and the lives of people we rarely see
those deaths we learn about on holidays

other camping trips merge with seed pods
on gravelly paths. We step around hollow logs
pull branches away from our eyes

carry the voices of people sometimes reluctantly
like rubbing a wattle leaf between fingers
then dropping it absent-mindedly

words falling and rising with a dirt path
hooked and twisted branches scattered about us.
I follow your breaths around rocks, uphill

to a view where there is no news, no media
and we are not the centre of the world.
The family I have left behind

and what that means here, beyond arrival points.
Feldspar, banksia, swamp melaleauca
drawing me in like breaths to count the day to.

                                          From Feldspar, Recent Work Press, 2023

**

Men I have worked with

The timber worker who looked me in the eye
and said he wanted to understand his mother.

The father who wore white overalls and a hairnet
operating the cheese guillotine for forty years.

The quietly spoken manager who took a long lunch,
called me into the office and sacked me.

The man who ordered a pie, a sav in batter
and beat me in table-tennis each lunch time.

The man who talked with a rollie in his mouth.
The man who talked to himself while picking lemons.

The saw sharpener who gave every tool a place
and tried to give me words of advice.

The man who slept in his bath
when he couldn’t find his bed.

The man I caught having a bong behind a stack of flitches.
The man with the DTs running off-cuts through a circular saw.

The short man with the large voice
who allowed me a coffee cup after three months probation.

The man who argued with his father, the owner
of the business, then walked away, shaking his head each day.

The man who introduced me at after work drinks
to a man who was the bloke to see if you wanted someone killed.

The man who paid for my long lunches
but couldn’t always pay wages.

The man who sacked me after a morning’s work
because I wanted to stack sports equipment my way.

The man who watered down clear spirits behind the bar
to conceal the bottles of vodka and gin he was giving to friends.

The barman who gave me dirty looks when I caught him
kissing women in the alleyway behind the Bar.

The man who smoked and swore through an interview.
The Principal who stepped aside from my interview to take a call.

The man I returned to three times to ask for my old job back
and who still didn’t give it to me.

The man who wears shorts in winter, rocks
on the balls of his feet, stands with his legs apart.

The men who sit at a staff table with other men
waiting for someone to begin talking about sport.

The man I learnt to build barbed wire fences with
and the man who has taught me to take them down.

                                                      From The Lowlands of Moyne, Walleah Press, 2019

**

Cows in India

The first time I saw cows in India
I wanted to round them up.

Yard them, milk them, close the gate
on a paddock, watch them nod along a cattle track.

Instead they wandered down alleys
up steps, along ghats, singular as saddhus.

They ate what was given – scraps, leftovers,
plastic, cardboard, even slurping their tongues

into huge woks of curries as they shambled
onward, forever onwards. Although,

I have seen a Brahman meditate in the middle
of cyclists, rickshaws, buses and beggars. Unlike

Holstein Friesians, the Indian cow is neither jumpy
or ear-tagged. They possess a quiet that is mundane

as flicking a fly with an ear. I’ve seen them dead
at roundabouts, have had to back away

from the trembling eye of a water buffalo.
I travelled to India, not looking for answers

just fences, gates, that farm
the cows in India lacked.

Locals even painted their horns blue,
hung flowers round their necks.

The first time I saw cows in India
I wanted to round them up.

                                        From Small Town Soundtrack, Hunter Publishers, 2015.

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