We always look back, <br />attracted by that feeling <br />of having been there before – the roads <br />sinking, the soil weeping (scab on scab <br />lifted), fences sunk to gullies <br />catching the garbage of paddocks, <br />strainers blocked by stubble <br />and machinery and the rungs <br />of collapsed rainwater tanks / and maybe <br />the chimney and fireplace <br />of a corroded farmhouse, once <br />the guts of the storm, now <br />a salty trinket. <br /> <br />The salt is a frozen waste <br />in a place too hot for its own good, <br />it is the burnt-out core of earth’s eye, <br />the excess of white blood cells. <br />The ball-and-chain rides lushly <br />over its polishing surface, even dead wood <br />whittles itself out of the picture. <br /> <br />Salt crunches like sugar-glass, the sheets <br />lifting on the soles of shoes (thongs scatter <br />pieces beyond the hope of repair) – finches <br />and flies quibble on the thick fingers <br />of salt bushes, a dugite spits <br />blood into the brine. <br /> <br />An airforce trainer jet appears, <br />the mantis pilot – dark eyed and wire <br />jawed – sets sight on the white wastes <br />for a strafing run: diving, pulling out <br />abruptly, refusing to consummate. <br /> Salt <br />explodes silently, with the animation <br />of an inorganic life, a sheep’s skull no more <br />than its signature, refugees already <br />climbing towards the sun <br />on pillars of salt.<br /><br />John Kinsella<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/pillars-of-salt/
