Eradu
in memory of ‘CPG’
1.
It’s not what’s written
on a sign to mark
where a town was.
And it’s not the railway
gleaming, or the bridge
that carries it over the river.
It’s not the vast acreage
under crop nor the twisted
metal uprights of a forgotten
tennis court. Nor, across
the line, the single mandarin
tree with its startling fruit
in a bed of dried mud
and herbicided grass.
Nor is there a space
within the space for litotes,
a trick of colonial expression.
It’s not this then that —
it’s not permission to walk
your own country,
your own birth. And this
is not the explanation
you don’t need, but a way
of remembering. It’s loss. Loss.
(ii)
We are before the explosive wattle
with rabbit diggings at its base.
We are descending the steep
gravel road towards the river crossing.
We hesitate. We walk under the railway
bridge with its sensors, its elevation.
Gambusia are darting in shallow,
algal waters and sand speaks imprint.
Saltbush and river redgum utter
their true names and the sun
questions photographs. This your
birthplace, this our presence.
Water over the road. Water fading.
Honeyeaters define renewal.
(iii)
Divided by the road of quadruple
trailered mineral-carrying trucks,
Eradu North and South, nature reserve
and broadacre farming, outcrops
and river bed, blue lupin flowers
wavering in bush enclave, on paddock edges.
Listen closely to vocalisations of insects
across the fringed lilies’ stereocilia.
I know the red-capped robin is angry
while excited, is hyped up on other matters
but also letting me know where I do
or don’t stand. In the biblical incursion,
it might be imitating a jeremiad. An
old campfire at the lookout, the river
working wet and dry towards
its ocean mouth, the sandbar.
Between ‘Greenough’ and Mullewa.
Not between country and ‘explorer’.
Out of time, I will stand before
the cathedral altar under stolen
sacred stone and silently ask,
‘Will you hear my friend’s call
for justice? Will you undo yourself
into the sacred, the ancient country?’
John Kinsella
