Off the Cuff 5: So Glad To Be Alive & Driving the Geelong-Bacchus Marsh Rd

APAD 5    prompt: "Too Much Information"

So Glad To Be Alive

He recovered from the bowel cancer.
Raising his kids alone.
Of course she had breast cancer
as well as the Hep C. A very stressed
liver! No, no chemo. Radiotherapy.
It wasn't what killed her, y'know
She had two breasts off. A bit
different from you. She wasn't
even fifty.
Yeah, him, he died young too.
Lung cancer? Or was it the intestine?
Can't remember.
It's never the breast cancer, it's
the secondaries. Those lymph glands
'n' things. It c'n go right through ya.
Oh, him? He's having two more
skin cancers off next week.
He reckons he's gonna cark it any day.
Well, he is sixty-five.



NaPoWriMo

Driving The Geelong-Bacchus Marsh Road

Three eagles high on a thermal
would regard cars & the black tar
as natural.
(We are discussing the downsides
of industrialisation)

How do the You Yangs, Brisbane Ranges
and intermediate sand dunes appear
to three eagles high on a thermal?

(We discuss a well-organised horse farm
its white-fenced paddocks, the long
cream stables building, a few small trees:
nothing out of place)

Rough and tumble, the land still
an inland sea, but of grass, dry-washed.
The colours of dry country - how many?
tan beige cream pale gold rich gold
brown lemon: a patchwork pelt.

(We discuss the possibility of touring
the open cut coal mine on seeing
the brown [here's a tourist attraction] sign)

(We work out - for the engineers - exactly
how to alter the junction with Woolpack Rd
to accommodate trucks)

Dead scrub like chooks' claws and dead ti-tree
among living brethren give way to a fine
hedge's filigreed top edge.

The three eagles and the thermal
from which they scan the ground
our progress, the changes from
black tar to grassland to farm
are well behind yet I am absorbed
in their intense watch.

The long eras of shaping this earth
the short time it takes to revegetate
the brief fifty minutes we take
to cross the state between ocean
and Great Dividing Range - all these
present and unaccountable.

(We discuss when the car needs
a service. And as we cross the railway
debate the advantages of creating
a fourth car park there)