Watching the washing

This is it

My peace

Sitting here, watching the washing,

A simple pleasure,

Despite the spider tick tick tickling my clammy neck

And the furious blasting summer heat

My face blushed with burn, arms sun pink,

All around me, the sky, huge, high, and impossibly blue

Bright flowers wilt, sag beneath this sparkling giddiness

Watching the washing, make silhouette shadows on the straw dry grass.

Sway left to right, right to left

Swinging and flapping, in the furnace dry wind

A sudden sharp gust snaps the sheets taut

The same heat and dizzying glittery light

And hay smell of baked grass

Reminding me of another home and country, once, decades ago

A sensory memory, glimpsed

Shimmering under a simmering burning sky

There was a Hills hoist then

And the tiger balm tang of eucalypts and turpentines

And a shrieking burst of crazy kooka cackle

And a southerly to cool the evenings

Australia

Once my home,

No longer my home

Always my home