I
Every year the moon inches away from us. In time she’ll swim too far out
to anchor us at our habitual angle to the sun, and that will be the end
of the well-tempered and recursive wildness
spacespacespacespacespacespathat conceived and suffered us,
and that will be the end of us. We have just two
billion years to thank her for our time here. Eternity has a use-by date

II
But it’ll be up long before that, and in the meantime,
I sit on the cold step of the cowshed and watch the world throw its shadow
on the moon like a horseblanket;
spacespacespacespacespacespain the meantime the moon reddens
in the refraction of all our dawns and sunsets, in a kind of transfigured cosmic
smog. An apocalypse that lasts three hours until it’s time to go to bed.

III
And in the meantime on the floor of my shed, blue planets sing in the hands
of children as they once sang in war. Two small worlds forged to cry terribly down
like creation unravelling upon one’s foes now
spacespacespacespacespacespamake a peaceful clangour on my secular desk.
One spins from its orbit and quakes and chips its cerulean shell on the floor
of heaven. The tectonics of play. We are loved like this, and this is how it ends.

IV
I’m arguing a lot with death these days. And last night I found myself
in court poised to clinch the case against the absurdity of life.
Certainly, this was sleeping and certainly
spacespacespacespacespacespaI was dreaming and I’d been losing the thread,
but all at once I saw where my argument must run, and I was running it there
when my small boy cried and woke me and I went to him and now I’ll never know.

V
Spring now, and the river has drawn back her bow. The lark ascends
from the cd-player, and black ducks sip brown ditchwater in the yard.
Everything’s in bud or leaf, last of all
spacespacespacespacespacespathe silver poplars and the Osage Orange,
trees flaring even now in the backyard of the childhood of my friend, the poet,
the poet’s son. The world happens twice. Draw the linen string taut and shoot.

VI
One lives in paradox. Debussy plays; trucks flounder past like gods
who’ve lost control of their machines. In between one makes one’s life up.
The sound is the price you pay for the sight
spacespacespacespacespacespathat meets you every morning and half
of what you paid for the house. The shed puts the perfect sky in her pocket,
and possums rut in the roof. Eternity is in rehearsal, and this is its soundtrack.

VII
Brad mows an acre an hour. A general at ease on his machine, a banker
in overalls, he’s rationalised our small republic on one tank of gas. And this now—
cutgrass at four o’clock—is how
spacespacespacespacespacespahope smells. Some days I can see no way out:
the body of the world in entropy. But today I sit among the ruins
of the afternoon, and I cannot see how it can’t all go on forever.

VIII
Meantime the moon has made herself new again, and there has been rain.
The Marulan hills, which had almost forgotten the taste of the word,
are spelling green again this afternoon,
spacespacespacespacespacespaand there’s water in a lake that’s been a paddock
for a decade. Three black cockatoos, and then three more, fly over as I take
the southwest road. And into all this panoply of hope, the new moon falls.

***

About the Author

Mark Tredinnick, author of The Blue Plateau, is an award-winning poet and essayist. He lives in the highlands southwest of Sydney, Australia.

As well as The Blue Plateau: A Landscape Memoir—published in Australia (UNSW Press) and North America (Milkweed) in 2010—Mark is the author of The Road South (poems on CD), The Little Green Grammar Book, The Little Red Writing Book (published outside Australia as Writing Well: the Essential Guide), The Land’s Wild Music , and A Place on Earth.

Mark’s honours include the Blake Poetry Prize, the Newcastle Poetry Prize, the Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize (runner up), the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, the Calibre Essay Prize, and the Wildcare Nature Writing Prize. His work has been anthologised and published widely in Australian and the US journals. His poems have appeared in The Best Australian Poems; his prose in The Best Australian Essays.

To find out more about Mark, visit his website at marktredinnick.com.au

Poetry Retreat with Mark Tredinnick

You can join Mark for a poetry writing weekend retreat at Olvar Wood Writers Retreat, April 16 to 18. As part of a small, intimate group of writers, you'll enjoy the pleasure of learning more about poetry, and gaining personal guidance on your own writing. Click here to find out more details, or to book your place.

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