When art has left a second sight,
silver birches lining the lake seem stilled to white scratches on metal sky. Cows stippled on a yellow hill are blacker, road rails flare like neon in evanescent flashes. Bending to meet us eye-to-eye, the sun paints peroxide tips on cross-hatched winter grasses, refracting light through the purpling day. It finds pale gums glowing in patient bushland patches, sidelined by the highway yet present as bones in an X-ray. Shimmering through scenic film, they conjure another landscape – hills with names, grasses in song (Wiradjuri, Ngarigo, Yuin). As dusk falls and suburbs fill sleeping Country watches, her dreams gleaming where the scrim frays. The fabric offers two threads, a chambray of black warp, white weft – both loosening, as all ancient paths are cut by the asphalt treadmill, all sacred names left cold. Behind glass we drive on, missing calls of Currawongs, though pliant Blackbird catches the tune and sings too in the evening chill, we barely ken the land’s archaic lai. |