I am not stuck in the circle, not welded
to the terrace I have reached: I drive or walk or run
across, then leap out past the river,
ancient shield, tracks of the rainbow
serpent, modern coinages thrown up to make
integral; when I smell smoke
over our grazing, I expect fire alarms
to bring the house down, and if they don’t, paranoia
gets the better of me. I am the roo chased
by hunters in a Ford ute with blazing
spotlights, back legs thrusting me forward
as my tail rudders at ungeometric angles
chopping beams frying insects, hooting, braying,
disrupting stars, and though I lose balance—
tumble, bone-snapping ‘roo bar’
aesthetic disjunction close to cleaning me up—
I hear their beer-disjointed contemplations paralleling
my anus, vulva, pouch, with sex-rites
they’d commit if they could get away with it,
and I roll to upright on my ‘weak’ forepaws,
humped like a granite dome, curvature
of spine, velvet pads and claws gripping
glass slivered stubble radiant as catheters
draining moonlight out of the fallowing field,
to reach an outcrop, hacking leaves of parrot bush
I’ll batter through with cuts and fur-loss,
leave them stranded shooting deflective, darkness.