“Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re about to … have water lapping at your door.” (Peter Dutton, 2015)
.
She’s wading through water,
and wading through
our liking for the second car,
the nightly dose of super-cool air,
or of sweet winter heat.
Because we can’t be bothered
to rise from the couch
like chilly plump angels
and put on one, just one,
of the many waiting clothes
tucked away in a fly-in wardrobe —
those fluffy ghosts hanging in time —
she’s wading, wading,
until she must learn to swim.
A second woman can’t farm
what she used to farm
because seasons have transmogrified.
Top soil becomes dust, washed
by flood, before care-saved seeds can grip.
She is farming our love of beef
served in sugared buns,
as she tries to raise cassava,
the idea of which forms,
seasoned with used to,
and our piquant insouciance.
And we still spend our time like coins
pushed through a yawn of pokies.
Even Yes! (beep) You’re a real winner!
can’t stir us up.
It is nibbling at us, too,
like so many fire-ants,
or a quieter plague
of dehydrated frogs.
It’s bleaching a reef,
evaporating rivers into dry mouths,
with dead black gums (ah, if only puns
could save us!) and species
are taking a dive, flat-splat into the past.
Time is lapping at our door.
Listen to its parched tongue
rasping on our thin glass.
Or don’t listen.
It means nothing.
That is not a clock with an old-fashioned tick.
Time means nothing, not anything at all.
