Seeing Paddocks Poem by Martin Harrison

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across the slope, emptiness like a tide sweeps everything away

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Dry wind grazes like fire in the middle height of trees.

If there’s a cloud it’s in the mind not in the world.
If there’s a trace or hint of it, it’s a thought not a thing.
If there’s an edge, it’s made here along the slope.
If there’s darkness, I bring it with me like blood.
If there’s more darkness, it’s exposed in the tree fringe.
If there’s a distant zig- zag, it speeds like a snake.
It runs down the sky like an upside down tree.
If it delivers an idea of change, it hits, it strikes.
(Rain smell, memory of wetness on strewn bark litter,
sound of rain, markings of rain on the ground.)
If it strikes, it brings fire, air, water.
If it breathes, it undries the mind like waking from a dream.
If it remembers, it gives back the dream’s clear outlines.
(Today no-one remembers the earth dream, the land dream.)
(Over there, a car goes silently by in its wind-river.)
If it’s too hard to get back there, leaf clusters parachute down.
If you want to look, you must look in the corner.
If there’s a play of shadow and untruth, bright wind still glares.
The surprised stillness of earth powders into dust.
The wind too is a leap a jump from one look to another.
If a root system drops from a swollen purple cloud.
One strike brings fire, air, water.
Three strikes brings gaol, mostly over nothings.
If you look you must look in the corner of the eye.
If there’s a gash of granite boulders, the flesh clefts them.
If the breath’s elements (soul elements) have dried like a dream.
(Rhythmed by the fence, a car goes silently by.)
If we place death somewhere, we will start forgetting it.
If death is placed here, it will start remembering.
It happens instantly.
The wind too is a leap between two views, two looks.
If — even if — there’s a dry place the past still weeps there.
When the wind trowels the sky, it leaves blue hints of thunderheads.
Over there, the paddock gazes out with its blond, bare contours.

across the slope, emptiness like a tide sweeps things away