Wangaratta to Wodonga

On the night train between

Wangaratta and Wodonga

The moon rises from the plain

Palest yellow to silver white

Flickering between stringybark and redgum

Shadows and

I’m back in the home of the gumtrees

After seeing them everywhere I went.

Gumtrees in Batumi offering shade

By the train tracks racing the waves

Of the Black Sea.

Cracking cement sidewalks

In Tirana and dotting

The Adriatic beaches from Bari to Porti di Vasti.

An odd colonisation

In reverse

Eucalypt invasion

Flame-oil grey-green vanguard

Of gumtrees and

Every place I went I thought

These bloody trees have

Got there first.

A row of streetlights in some nameless little town

Somewhere after Wangaratta

Floats beneath the moon

As it flies beside

The train

Forming an artificial alter

Of light for Luna to continue

Her rise.

Grain silos compete with the gumtrees

To flicker out the moon’s light

As we approach Wodonga in the dark.

The last time I was here

All was drought

Now water lays on the ground in

Pools of light full of

Elongated reflections of a second moon

Sunken to earth.

Nightlights on the ground until

The pools evaporate.