The Early Onset of Darkness

The Early Onset of Darkness

The Early Onset of Darkness

Winter has little if nothing
To do with it; the first to go
Is the cloched light of the “gulley”,
Gazetted for a road, mock-hollow
Between paddock and fencing.

It is imagined foxes know
This counterpoint to light,
Awaken with day’s closing, but internally
Realise the red-orange fringe, bright
On the range’s granite edge, slow

In memory, as slow it is rapid
In recollection. And then the mid-ground
With its tapering gradient, valley
Walls balancing quadratic sound
Within the visual equation, a grid

Of darkness overlaying the canopies
Of York Gum stands and patches of parrot
Bush; the final stage is not a scree
Of crows calibrating a summit,
But bristling metal of antennas

Networking the district. Redress
Of equivocal connection, the radiant air
Inside the cells of the disconnected body,
An irritant, an afterthought, the glare
Of headlights coming out of blankness.