Thirty Summers #128 Claine Keily

I sleep deeply now, like a teenager come back from the beach. In the afternoon I sit on the steps of my house with the forest so close it touches me. I know that soon I will have to cut a pathway through the bush or become enclosed by it. But I laze before this task, having spent decades living on dust in waterless paddocks, so as the trees, now before me, appear as something out of a fairytale.

There is little time to stare at the trees and flowers. The school calls me back and I am expected to rein in the cruelty of children who test me out merely because I am a stranger to them and because they fear I will expose their lack of a measurable skill.