Samuel Wagan Watson

2006

Back Road

revisiting childhood through that time-gauze of greying feather,

back to a time

when the road seemed wider

but had the same volume of insanity

 Dad always concrete at the wheel

Mum in the “Worry” seat

sharing with Dad,

the worries sometimes reaching the backseat

as the sporadic vapours got too heavy

and did their backdraft thing

upon our small foreheads

breathing in the pockets of

blackness

 yet, we ride

our little bodies fading into the upholstery

 the rear-view mirror

keeping its eye on us

Smoke Encrypted Whispers,
University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2004