From a South Gippsland Roadside

 

I tried writing a love song or two.

I've never felt that,

but when I was sixteen

it helped me process

a schoolboy crush.

 

I've never felt anything

but that intense aching of knowing —

this mint stuck in my throat.

 

I broke a fox once,

at sixty kilometres an hour

on a dirt road

when it snapped its neck

on my bumper.

 

By the roadside,

I cradled its floppy head in my lap

and comforted it while it died,

and laid its broken body in the grass

when it finally did.

 

Uncertain where it bled from,

I wiped my hands on my jeans

and drove away.

 

I still hate that weakness —

that I couldn't bring myself

to euthanise it when I could have;

that it was easier to watch it suffer

 

in my lap.

 

                    -September 2017

 

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