Fabulous image, Andrew of that tented wallaby. That tent of blue that wallabies call the sky? I trust you were listening to Tull's 'Locomotive Breath'. Black cattle do seem far more commanding than politicians in white buildings.
Bill
> On 11 Feb 2015, at 1:12 pm, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Yes, I've been in tune with this on a road trip to and from Canberra -
> about 825 kms over all. Lots of such markings - but none for the many
> wallabies and 'roos knocked down by haulage trucks. Sad sight after sad
> site.
>
> Except one site where a wallaby was indeed squashed with a hind leg
> sticking grotesquely up in to the air, forming a shadowy tent between her
> thighs, drying beside the road before a barbed wire fence which marked the
> edge of a massive paddock of grey stubble after harvest, and standing
> proudly on a small hill in the distance, a pure black cow, alone in this
> wide open pastoral plain, surveying her holdings to the horizons, with only
> the occasional gum tree to break the landscape.
>
> This I saw passing at 110kms per hour, Jethro Tull playing an ironic sound
> track of English folkrock in our air conditioned Japanese car.
>
>> On 11 February 2015 at 08:06, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks, Millicent. I hadn't considered family pets. Maybe there are not as
>> many human road deaths as I surmised.
>>
>> It's the rapid withering that gets to me. And the openness, I suppose.
>> Some sort of naked need to declare, out there by the road where all rushes
>> by, that some will never rush again.
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>
>>>> On 11 Feb 2015, at 7:50 am, Millicent Borges Accardi <
>>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> I like this one Bill-- especially
>>>
>>>
>>> "But such bouquets fall mourn-short."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "Emblems continue to accumulate
>>> at the site of last breath, of sudden
>>> rupture. There's a reaching in these
>>> jumbled cairns."
>>>
>>>
>>> In the canyon where I live, there are many road "offerings," where a
>> family pet was killed, pedestrians, bicyclists. What happens in Topanga is,
>> after a time, the flowers and candles disappear but eerie white crosses
>> remain, dotting the windy mountain road. Most unmarked.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Millicent
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Kale Soup for the Soul
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.MillicentBorgesAccardi.com
>>>
>>> @TopangaHippie on Twitter
>>>
>>> Água mole em pedra dura tanto dá até que fura
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]>
>>> To: POETRYETC <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Sent: Tue, Feb 10, 2015 12:44 pm
>>> Subject: On the Road
>>>
>>>
>>> Who loads these offerings
>>> by roadside death spots?
>>> Not relatives surely; friends,
>>> you assume, who have already
>>> placed flowers on the coffin, in
>>> chapel, at graveside or urn wall.
>>>
>>> But such bouquets fall mourn-short.
>>> A soul interrupted en route seems now
>>> to require temporal marking. See those
>>> propped white crosses tilting, golden
>>> framed pictures catching the sun's glint,
>>> printed pages flapping in car-breeze,
>>>
>>> oversized stuffed toys nuzzling CDs,
>>> in loose piles, footy scarves, trophies.
>>> Emblems continue to accumulate
>>> at the site of last breath, of sudden
>>> rupture. There's a reaching in these
>>> jumbled cairns. Institutions can't cut it.
>>>
>>> Even when colours fade, animals
>>> desecrate, the vacuum remains.
>>> Not just the absence of the departed,
>>> but some gapingness the dead
>>> leave in all of the rest of us,
>>> for whom the road winds on.
>
>
>
> --
> Andrew
> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
> 'Undercover of Lightness'
> http://walleahpress.com.au/recent-publications.html
> 'Shikibu Shuffle'
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/new-from-aboveground-press-shikibu.html
>
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