Split

I claim Elvis

hips and lips and that whole generation

and Beale Street, gospel, rock and blues –

hell, I’ll claim the Mississippi River too

and if we’ve made our way on down the Gulf

I take Cinco de Mayo because Americans know

how to cook beans

that sit somewhere between firm and soft

and we say ‘quesadilla’ properly

so then throw in Blackspeak and Native art

because I spent my childhood in the deep south

my twenties in the desert

and man I seen oppression

through the window of my Ford Tempo

so there is a sort of kinship in my us and them

and yeah, the destruction of the Twin Towers

(but not Bush, neither of them)

and the monumental loss

the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains

and the monumental space

and the open road, every diner

the ever-present fizz of Coke

so you might as well put me at a baseball game

because I claim that too

(you see I don’t get cricket or meat pies)

but I do so love the Australian twang

of my child’s emphatic ‘no(y)’

the way my man slips on his worn leather Hard Yakka boots

to split our winter wood

and the smell of the sea, how it drifts to me

wherever I am when dusk clears its perfect throat

and floats over the city’s red roofs

and seeps between the gum nut trees

and the way we rejoice in a morning rain

and the scent of eucalyptus it brings:

these monumental things.