The Shower Stall

Wisdom does not follow conquest, although

I tend to fall into thinking so. Sitting here,

on a milk crate, watching the easy bounty

of bore water sluice over her leg, holding

the hose high above her knee, so the current

cascades down slender cannon to film and bulb

the swell of her fetlock and then rush away

over coronet, hoof, concrete floor, to pool among

blue top, farmer’s friend, toads, dragonfruit rot, wild

raspberry bushes that house the black, spare

fairy-wrens with their flash of slapstick orange.

A slow sulphur of pain, low and new in my back,

I rest my forehead against her belly, listen

to the secret world of digestion

and the ever present electrics

of a prey animal, tranquillized for now

by the water whispering to her hot leg,

by my hand on her shoulder, but ever alert

just below the surface, like a bream ready

to dart for those insects that sit and skim.

The infection is no worse, nothing has risen

any further. The grass has grown too long,

once the rains have stopped the tractor

will come to slash the paddocks, until then,

the weeds have won. Ants retreat down a fencepost;

flushing the black pepper of grass seed out

of the wound, I feel a shift in pressure

under the iron hull of cloud before

the next deluge. A magpie calls bright and clear in the lull,

teaching its juvenile to hunt, to be,

and a large butterfly appears, solitary, wings the dark

grain of cedar or mahogany. The world ripples

when I stand, unwell, I guess, but not enough

to notice until I’m in the realm of the physical:

paddocks, mud, boots, wheelie bin of chaff

smelling sweeter than cakes never baked

in my childhood oven. Autumn is around the corner

with its mornings of mist and promise

of dry days. The rain, now, when it comes,

is cooler than I expect. It runs down my back

in rivulets, soothes the burr of fever against

my skin. I can no longer see the hills,

all is valley now, all close in. The young

magpie dips and jogs, staccato, across

the round ring, looking for the worm.

Lisa Brockwell