Bushfires continuing, Sunday Nov 9

Bushfires          morning 9 Nov 2019

North, west and south, bushfires are burning,
a hundred homes lost; one confirmed dead so far.
Bald Knob Tick Gate, Bostobrick; Shark Creek;
Bril Bril; Doon Doon; Thumb Creek; Muck Creek;
Halfway Creek; Tullymorgan; Stockyard Flat; Rivertree;
Captains Creek; Woodenbong; Purfleet – all on fire,
all names new to me that don’t inspire confidence.
All are recent, pinned to the map since fire-stick
farming and managing the country petered away.

The sun is hiding, the air poisonous, the sky compressed.
Friends, closer to the fires, took shifts all night to watch
their red horizon. The Southerly ripping through woke us
after one, we listened to the emergency alerts on the radio.
Now I think of it, the dawn chorus failed this morning.

We would stay and fight to save our house and our work,
home is the pilgrimage, our garden and the forest.