Road Trip

The world slides by along the freeways.

The city petering away with every tyre spin.

The suburbs stretching out till they become warehouses,

Whose frequency diminishes amongst roadside stalls,

Spruiking fresh eggs and horse manure for two dollars a bag.

Even they will dissipate into the wide expanse

of dry shades of green with not much in-between

That's if you don't count scenery as something.

There's not much out here to cast a shadow,

Where the plains roll on long and far.

Only those scattered scraps of clouds,

can taint the roundy hills with patches of darker hue,

Amongst a green thats leached of any verdant blush.

It's a funny kind of lake where sheep are grazing,

And fence posts crisscross its surface marking paddocks.

Men used to drown out here but not anymore.

Of course George is still a lake though,

You can see its soul in the heat haze of a mirage,

Where grasses become reeds in languid pools,

And skittering dragonflies suggest it's still lurking here,

A mushy lake beneath the unruffled surface.

We'll take the old road back that snakes around the new

It's quiet undulations a tonic to society's constant stream.

The trees sneak up closer to us now.

You can reach out to almost skim the skin,

of the scribble barked gums,

Their battered trunks belying their short lives.

Out here the letterboxes have personality,

Clustered together at some off-shoot of a road.

Rusted tin concoctions from garage leftovers,

and elvish treehouses carved with love,

rub shoulders with hopefully expectant beer barrels.

We'd make one for ourselves back home,

'Cept it would just get picked on in the suburbs,

Where individuality is better off boxed in.

The daylight is creeping away now,

The trees become brushstrokes on a colourful canvas.

Back on the main road the traffic begins to jam in.

It's as though they've caught the scent of Monday's approach.

The city outskirts take formation around us,

A bottleneck of red and white lines,

As roads become grids and the dark grows deeper.

I've been here before, in journeys long forgotten

Nose pressed against the glass of a bus window,

Fingers crusted in salt from the roadhouse pit-stop.

Listening to the same songs tick by on the stereo,

As everything slowly grinds its way home.

It's cold and dark and everyone's bone weary.

The feelings just the same despite the passing years.