The kid at work reckons he's surfing
for the Easter long weekend.
He drives up, leaving late:
midway to the Merimbula gate
he pulls over with his mates,
cocooning unreservedly
in full view of the Hume.
I do not know
where urges to private space /
a white noise commode
come from,
but nothing could be more nightmare to me
than headlights
bending identical orbits
across your tent til dawn.
Are there not at least truck stops,
where the hecticness is off a bit,
processional, side on? I say.
Nah, none of that. It's actually
less noisy in the culverts
drivers chuck their thoughts into:
kilometres are way less long
when you're not conscious of them:
my life is not the storyboard
I thought it'd be, eventually, e.g.
there are vast black fields
between the lights of every town.
William Fox is a poet from Melbourne. His work has been published in various places, including Meanjin, Southerly, Island, Overland, and the Best Australian Poems series. He finished a PhD in Australian poetics at Melbourne Uni in 2007.