The Night Coming

I was thinking it was cold, the heater

struggling against the draught,

and that there was nothing I could say, how

empty my mind was,

but then looked up and saw you

working in the paddock in the thin rain in your black

jacket against the almost-evening

of the trees

with the white dog at heel

and the four sheep grazing about you

and the sounds, through the mist, of the cockatoos

settling in the high branches,

the woodshed in its winter sleep,

the five wild ducks

moving in single file through the grass.

David Brooks