Days later and the wind howls.
Days later and we know the piles of scrub
will still be smouldering.
The combination is terrifying.
Between Wongan Hills and Goomalling.
Goomalling—‘possum town’,
founded 1902. A ‘pass through’.
It’s the Shire’s burning down.
Claiming a conflagration,
flares. Errant growths
bulldozed to cloister. The possums dead.
Smoke in Corinthian columns
stuck like early impressions:
books, television, travel:
cultural foistings.
Temples of the dead.
Offerings. Sacrifices. Summonings.
It’s not much past summer:
the heat is in the air,
the ground. Chain reactions.
If you ask at the Shire
office: it’s so hot today,
why are they burning off?
Permits…permits…will
come the reply. Duplicate,
a vestigial memory of official
carbon paper. An über-myth
sparks, ashes, blazes,
stacked like beacons on a wavering
horizon. It’s not arson. Belief.
Local law; by-laws; laws
of diminishing returns.
‘Possum town’. The Shire of.