– from THE AGE¹
“STANDARD HAY BALES”
Not the newies with their silly van Gogh swirls but the standard block of desiccated perfumes. A fifty acre paddock gridlocked with them, each one is green and slow bunched is a caterpillar, the lasered space as chocked as a trailbike’s tread. Only once there’s one diving on its either end where the stron- armed bailer baled dissent (a digit raised against the uniformity on show) while the rest is passive in its even traffic jam which from above becomes a repetitious Pianola roll then in 3D is more like mid lines of tidy droppings. A lane is kept aside on each mowed stretch and well before the outside windrows are pressed the carters start to gather there like formalists.
– Philip Hodgins.
¹ This poem was printed in The Age, Melbourne’s main daily newspaper.
CurseOfTheTraveller 