From Eva Sounness: Leaving the Goldfields

From Eva Sounness: Leaving the Goldfields

From Eva Sounness: Leaving the Goldfields

Eva sits on the train. She is watching the crowd
  at the station, the precise expression of faces,
    the way a man crinkles his brow as he blows unshed tears

into his safe handkerchief. They are leaving,
  leaving the dust of Kalgoorlie, the red saltbush plains,
    the jostle of mining equipment against the horizon,

the chimneys, the skeleton structures of tall poppet heads,
  the way the earth swallows men up and spits them out
    with a faint trace of gold in their sweat.

Eva sits on the train. She is memorising
  the colour of Kalgoorlie dust. She is calling to mind
    the names of her friends, she is sketching

a house in the distance that leans, small and empty
  against the wind. She is tracing the contours of shopfronts
    and running her hand over faces to capture the shape of a nose.

She is taking it with her. Packing it up in her bag
  like a painting, a series of clay figurines,
    a charcoal sketch she returns to, over and over,
    smudging out lines and shading in features,
  trying to bring back the shape of a roof, the way
two lips purse and open to say farewell.