Drought essay: Recognising the derision as fear

Death gets into the suburbs, but sleek

turnover highrise keeps it out of mind

and wilderness, wrapped in its own deaths,

scarcely points us at ours,

but furred rusty machines, and grey

boards unglazed for heritage or holiday –

you can’t truck in enough bricks.

Settled country is the land of the dead,

there you are taught love as mourning,

you shop in boarded-up places.

It’s great to follow car-dust

out towards the Mistake,

way past a working people’s farm,

long widowed, standing in space.