crack dawn after breath
needing to dream man-campers off the mountains
or into them. a single mackerel laughs in the dugout. were they war-weary
or war-dreaming. pests for stories & injuries to ankles
skis that smelt like boats in the alpine dark
welcome to medium river
storm vapour sweetens the coffee-break ridge
abandoned hut dog can’t say who its relatives are
•
in avalanche forums
we do fall down
under hot moons on elbows
•
hut: lonely psychiatrist
creek: clean beer fridge
tracks: walk back over
phone: windmill arm directions
•
a clock counts down the days to the end of semesters
& the end of the long weekend & the implementation
of the national vape ban. i embrace it. in my tarp pocket
an 11-year-old begging for hits: murray you can’t have my vape
pushed into his tent by his snow kelpie dad. sleeping
bag cry in the dark. tom pushes pâté onto plastic plates
& tailors through our favourite death-mountain story
the clouds
were nuclear & thicker than vapes. weren’t experienced skiers:
they were. they were accountants from albury. they were cooks
from wonnangatta. every morning they got up & followed their
compasses to where the tracks should have been & only found
rocks & more white-night-day licking the hills & moved back
to the cairn & their dugout. finally they abandoned the summit
sleet smeared their faces. yelled into the wind. cleve lost his ski
in the mist. found later. they inched down rocks on their hands
into the wrong directions. toe nails / cans of beans. empty half-
logs & bird debris all left on the mountain. everything chewed
on the mountain careful with front-four teeth
one bright yellow light
holding its hand up at the top of the memorial hut being petted like an animal
by 30 white men with cameras. words punch like electric flowers out of the
snow of hills. no names. except names stumped out on horse-hoof journeys
then. & at this point now. the milky way blinking pink & remembering. whose country
deep-time named explosions alive
in the weather. screeching like moths
dragonflies wing it / lifting tents’ corners
one guy stuck on the mountain. one stayed behind. one went on
& followed the creek & found a tent with nurses in it / tree-killers
marched into the valley: extraction. cleve died with his feet being
pursed by a nurse’s hands. a last accountant-bogong breath closed
as small as ash / i imagine
our breath’s sharp as helicopters. usually
panicked like politics in remote tin sheds
•
satellites swim through stars fast
red & nauseous in whisky
breathe no coverage here
•
they sent pounds across the mountains & field notes to their
mothers. parched footnotes to their fathers. teeth pinged by
gold to the national enquirers. they coughed stories close to
fires. really close. science bled in packets in bourke st’s gpo
emptied envelopes in bathtubs. brown moths: angle of light
•
hut: a snowy hydro cleaner
poetry: visitors’ entry book
sky: sienna enemy
labor: stale nostalgia
•
what are war memories? it turns out they’re orphan memories ratcheting
council propaganda at the information centre in bright. our flight takes a
tumble in bare canberran air when jessie yells out from mt ainslie & plants
her baby screams there. in the windscreen: debris of moths & other hume
motorists’ petrol scrub. cows flinch. kidding. they caw for freedom from
public phantoms including aviation’s backburns & locusts making weird
bedfellows with leaders of the national party from adjacent states. maybe
log out. don’t vape. don’t stare. paddle pop weeping on lake armageddon
cleaves this sweet nostalgia. under the car we search for allen’s snakes &
keys. pretty alpine children unwrapping protein bars. collating mandarin
skins. quickest echidna scent gone when it reaches its kitchen in wang
•
death’s plenty. it’s gold’s parade
we told you we came with headlights
aestivating in wild dawns
•
we pant. fox hair gleams from earth-sized mist
i bark. ear dust dreams grey vape at the summit
gareth checks his messages. water pork crackles
in crypts. covid wracks the new romantic cove
gas stoves crow murray-wild in family memories
of maurie foun. we’re unwriting while writing &
writing it. moths break from memory too. they’re
orphan memories. our ways leached by milk dust
in white-paper banks. grey-red lakes. robins show
their red flags lit. our tongues with time flaked
on them. hell is an arch where storms flow. car’s
a split vision. the dog coughs stars in baby mites
old sleep is netted in mountain-hound dreaming
paddling orphans throw stones in pumped water
plastics break. stones burdened by labour & kisses
crack in real-time love & unopen warkwoolowler
—
‘we do fall down’ draws from Emma Lew’s ‘Bounty’; ‘I do worship, but I must not fall down’
‘walk back over’ is from Jeanine Leane’s ‘Whitefellas’
‘whose country’ draws from Lisa Bellear’s ‘To the Palawa’; ‘whose land is Snow Country’
‘what are war memories? it turns out they’re orphan memories’ draws from Don Mee Choi’s ‘I, Lack-A-Daisy’; ‘What are world memories? It turns out that they are war memories. And what are war memories? They are orphan memories’
Sian Vate’s new collection Heaven (Puncher and Wattman) is forthcoming.