#145 Kevin Brophy 'It's true, isn't it?'

#145 ‘It is true, isn’t it?’

Bless the men for holding an election

and letting some women

get elected too

is it true that some men will vote

for these women

bless them

and is it true

that some of these women

will be senators for six years

or is there a law against that too

let me bless the man who stuttered

on television last night

and the woman beside him

so proud of something

as he asked a question I couldn’t follow

and bless this long road

we have taken, its tolls and potholes

there are birds with white chests

and dark backs flying around

in threesomes

who know nothing

of what doesn’t matter in the short run

or even the medium

they still talk among themselves

in pips and squeaks warbles

and flits of the beak

or eye or wing

that can say and mean everything

bless all apples ever eaten

bless the desert snake somewhere

in the walls in the playroom

listening to children cry

and mothers sigh

making no sense of this

I don’t know what the cars do here

except rust, lose windows, and agree

to stand out finally

in sunsets

wrecked

and forever contemplative

of the role of the machine as forlorn object

is it true that a boy follows his father

down the road

his father pushing a mower

the boy looking at his own feet move

just like his father’s

and the father thinking of doing a job

that needs to be done

bless him in his garden

bless the fire at the ends of our burning fingers

bless whatever lives

in the hollows of the coolibah

the boy’s father knows

where the old grinding stone is

in the creek

a stone left behind

maybe forty thousand years ago

maybe a hundred and fifty years ago

maybe dropped there fifty years ago

he visits it

picks it up

turns it over

(it was used on both sides)

weighs it in his hands

as something carried

across a desert

(it’s not a stone from here)

and puts it back

bless this memory of Eden

bless all the apples ever eaten

and the men who’ve allowed

some women to stand for election

is it true

the boy is known as the boy

who knows

about dogs dingoes and goannas

and he walks

just like his father

who will never stand for election

but can teach you how

to cut and saw and mow

is it true

the town is moving past and

no one is on commission here

someone has a couch on a trailer

as if they’re moving out

or moving in

bless the dogs that go like

dogs through our dreams

homeless and wholly themselves

gnawing on questions their souls

cannot understand

bless all memories of walking

a woman carries a baby

while the man carries the pusher

the true dust is on their real feet