POEM #28

Aubade

I am up
before all things.
This autumn morning
hands us a take on
Antarctic completion.
In colourless sky,
a late satellite
like a lethargic meteorite
intersects a fingernail
clipping of moon.
Our beloved Southern Cross
is a lost kite falling
to a child's
reaching hand.
I drive past waking paddocks
stitched together with new fencing;
through pine windbreak,
the Ibiza strobe effect
of blood orange sunrise.
Here and there,
mist between crop bails
like unfinished bowls of cereal.
I pull over outside
Montrose Berry Farm.
Anti-rosella netting
on a dozen plum trees
creates a crowd of deformed brides,
enough ghosts to freak a truckie,
a cloud done with firmament.
A lone Belted Galloway
stares at a black-eyed farmhouse
then bellows, bellows.
Some road workers
in ice block colours
pull up in a truck -
one gets out,
stretches, yawns,
picks up a pine cone,
studies it as if Egyptian artifact.
I should text in sick,
turn off my engine,
tilt back my chair,
not wake up until dark.

LJ, March 12 2013.