Against the level sun and the screech of brakes
through porous sheets of blindness I gripped
the wheel and stopped above the great plain
till I saw him kindle the reefs of cloud
over the western ridge. Then, wire-strung,
set in the rim of the embankment down
the tumbling hill, I saw the dragon’s teeth
flash past against the fired sky.
Fence-posts, I thought: in dreamy lands
the reading of signs is unprofitable.
Yet in the nursery the monster sleeps.
He sighs and heaves oozing a greenness past
this green, where magic sword and holy spear
glint still unread in the flight of birds,
in the prophetic guts of oxen.

                                              Children,
please don’t retreat behind this sunset
yet. I carry the pterodactyl in the van,
the flying spider, bats big as babies.
Tyrannosaurus himself wanders about
bigger than old whales grazing across
the frozen seas, than tanks on the doorstep
of Nicaragua. Saw him through misty glass
this morning stalking the towns in the hills
when shivering just out of frosty night
I prayed until the sun who flickered in the woods
crept up the flanking conifers and hit the top
with a crash of cymbals.

                                         Night is falling
forever now over the roads in the North
of New South Wales. The blue-bright waters
of an undying day are seeping through
into perplexing memory. Scouting beams
sculpt shapes ahead from shifting shadows,
furbish up idols out of secret time
that rush surprised along the edge of light
back into populous darkness. This trip
is endless, the compass irrelevant. My riches
are now fetched by maps beyond the truth
of geography and the attraction of the poles.

*From the book “Falcon Drinking”.