Geraldton Wax

About 50 km north of Geraldton The Northwest Coastal Highway becomes Hampton Road And on the corner of Hampton and Fifth Avenue There's an old Caltex station where the road trains reload Rusted sheet metal walls rise from cracked concrete Your depth perception dances in the shimmering heat Old rickety gates marked by wood surname signs Line the sparsely housed wide set dead end streets If you drive down to where the gravel gives way To the orange dirt road laced with paddy melon seed Rusted swing sets are grown over and under With Patterson's Curse and crawling cape weed The backyards give way to the patchwork plains Littered with wild burrows and dried out sheep bones Half submerged limestone like outback icebergs No sound but the languid cattle low You might see my mother Kneeling in the garden Raising a gloved hand to shield her eyes Beneath the wide horizon above ramshackle fences That delineate the rough property lines Or my brother barefoot Peering at tadpoles In a bucket beside the rainwater tank By the outdoor laundry where the weeds grew high If you were travelling that way in 95 Now that I'm grown I barely recall The lines on your face The sound of your call At the setting sun Ride your bikes homes Hot summer months The cicadas drone Singing in the paddock Swinging in the park Climbing high through the jade Building up the ramparts Pelting pomegranates Stealing the figs Fashioning weapons to fight the neighbour's kids I drive back up there every year or two It's different now someone painted the house blue Took out the jade bushes from before I don't know what I go there looking for I think it might have been my fault I think it might have been I think it might have been my fault I do About five hours north of Perth West Australia There's a seaside city where I was born There are overalled workers down at the cray factory Past the general practice and the dollar store Warm Easterly winds bend the trees backward The burning dunes will blister your feet You can see the wheat silo's and the Catholic cathedral From the wishing well up on Mount Misery The Chapman River rises east of Northampton And it flows down southward to the coastal plain Indian Ocean storm swells through rip tides and reef For the wind surfers out on the waves at Hell's Gate You can hear yellow tennis balls hitting red brick walls Low hum of the fan while you sleep with a sheet From the big boss cigars at the deli on Birch To the bottlebrush outside the Baptist Church And there's a cult passed through And you took me down To an old duplex in the poor part of town And he lay his hands on me to pray And he made me afraid of my body to this day Corner block house White window frames Little woodshed beside where we'd hide when it rained Dance around the tree stump Cadets march through the town Scent of sea breeze and sunscreen Gum leaves on the ground Cricket cage matches in 40 degrees Before bar stools smelling of beer and nicotine Clay pipes and cannons from the June mutiny Of the maiden Batavia wrecked on the Morning Reef Acoustic guitar in its velvet lined case Wash my brain down at the evolution exposé From Memorial Park with its Waiting Lady To the frangipani outside the AOG They were burning books down on Main Street On their hellish float they were smashing TV's Altar call gets the congregation Up to the front and down on its knees And-uh the Lord-uh Daughters and sons Demonstrate your receipt of the gift of tongues From you down by their feet colouring on the floors To the prickly palms out the Potter's House doors Forty thousand ochre dots And a Wajarri tongue that is all but forgot Bends in the riverbeds Shades of the stones A decommissioned swing 50 fallen pinecones With the Mckenzie kids and the souls of lost sailors The Geraldine miners and the old Greenough jailers We'd climb out on the rocks where the waves break hard When the beach was an abandoned railway marshalling yard And when the land development signs went up We hurled rocks along with all the swear words we knew And in the summer months we'd drag our mattresses Outside and sleep under the Midwest moon Now that I'm grown I barely recollect The outdoor bathtub where they submerged my flesh In the mineral sands where we ran aground My bones showed through the wet nightgown Sunk like a ship Fallen in folds Taken as gospel truth the roughshod that you rode I'd have done damn near anything to see you pleased Baptise me beneath the river bridge where Dad lost his teeth I drive back up there every year or two It's better now I guess there's more to do The Dome of Souls still gets me like it did When they built it way back then when I was a kid Now that I'm older I sit on the stoop And I smoke cigarettes just like you used to do I think it might have been different I think it might have been I think it might have been different I do