Essential day

 Flocks of birds, no longer afraid, swirl before the bonnet

So I ride with them centre line

I take my attention off the road to this haiku turned sonnet as I

pass silently and alone over newly completed structures until 

signs tell me to reduce speed and I do insanely and immediately

Young men barely boys help their father build a fence on a roadside property,

how sad the adjacent empty compounds we knew as schools

There are shops with no one to shop and cops with no one to cop

But there’s one cop on the highway verge he’s pulled up a mobility scooter

With a man aboard who is breaking loneliness and heading for the city 

And his flouting will not be tolerated

The New World delivery

van is trying to save time,

the time we need to make a new world.

Things have reversed up like lion oil

We stop the scan for saviours, with eyes that search for the edible

 no longer concerned with Elon Musk and the incredible because 

you've remembered what it takes to make a loaf and a swindle.

Somehow the sky looks clearer and more still; 

how it does when you've caught up on sleep

Hordes of youth are yet to mount utes and go find food and gas and guns

And I go from a Ghandian response

Take my pumpkins!

to my sniper lair on the hill overlooking my place

Take my pumpkins?.

Red earth signals a finality,

paints us all in unity as the slipped disc of sun, 

who has done her bit, sets into her hide

Who are my people, my people?

I want to be with

my people my people

Later when I dropped off the possum trap I recall the neighbour predicting the future and then I joined in on that

My mate Dean said on the phone the reality is, 

we have never known tomorrow