#199 Evacuated

Our two nurses have driven off in their ambulance.

Someone assaulted a nurse in another town

fifty kilometres away, we are told.

Nurses, doctors, they’re on the road now.

Luckily our nurses dropped off enough pills

to get us through the next few days.

We hear the next town’s shop is closed

and nothing moved on the airstrip for two hours.

The clinic, the shop, the office, the airstrip,

all closed.

But the art centre will be open tomorrow

and the desert never shuts down

even when children go away and everyone

is sick, our desert still concentrates

on its flowers, its grasses, snakes and lizards.

It is so busy, there is so much to attend to,

the art is so pressing and vivid

that evacuation is out of the question.

We hear people fighting, or it could be the crows

arguing some fine point with the pushy Corellas.

We hear a car go by full of boys ready for a fight

or a card game.

We don’t know whether to panic or go to sleep.

Crows knock down the bins along the road

and kick the garbage about with perfect contempt

for it.

We will light a fire and build a telescope

and invite the few we know to come over

for tea and visions.

Isn’t that what all this comes to?