PERTH AND FREMANTLE
Autumn In The Hills: Burning Off
that which is too old, or is diseased, is weak, is too full
of itself, or in the way, or plain unlucky: that which has
dropped, been lopped, torn, stormed down:
that which will
not be composted or mulched or bunched for trucking out:
the gatherings of spiny hakea, of diosma, obese, unruly,
and of tired dried wattle and melaleuca honey-myrtle, and
the billowing reeking bosoms of lavender and the mounds
of summer’s eucalypt leaves, swept, and swept, that fell
every
day, skidding, and chattering, and the throngs of
prickled dryandra parrot bush and the hairy stretchings of
tea
tree, of scarlet bottlebrush, and the arms, ripped, sawn,
of jarrah, and mallee red gum, of casuarina she-oak, and
of
white-barked wandoo: ‘it’s a good day for a
fire,’ my
neighbour calls, and we set up the twigs and the sticks, the
bits of branches, the sloughed strips of bark, and strike a
match to paper, watch the hesitant licking, the curling of
flame,
the gentle lift of the first smoke of the first burning
of the autumn, and feed the yellow mouthful by mouthful,
serving
with cagey hands, for trees hang about us, but
quick as wit the flames take root, turn hungry, angry, surge
greedily
with every toss of fodder as the oils burst, the
tongues seething and hissing, lashing as they grab, suck at
the oxygen that rushes, and we sweat, bending to the
blaze, throwing armfuls, branches, stumps into the jaws of
the frenzy, piling, and building, and rebuilding, hot to
ditch the debits of the
year, swollen to a cargo like a hump
on the back that one frets to be shot
of, to be free to
to start again, be clean again: ‘you can't say no to
a fire,’
he shouts as he tailors the burning with
a jarrah stake,
and soon the fire prods him into
talking, and he talks of
stars
and spiders and he talks of the delight of his busy
clarinet and of his trees of olive and citrus that bring fruit
and of
his heart that stopped and of all that followed:
and
we beaver as we talk as we burn: and he burns his stuff
and I burn my stuff and his stuff burns my stuff and my
stuff burns his stuff and his smoke is my smoke and mine is
his
and the line between his place and my place is hardly
a line at all and to burn together is to love your neighbour:
what
burns, burns, there being no pity in a fire, and the
huddles of flesh and bone shrink fast as the burning rages:
‘it
goes quickly,’ he says, and he hands me a rake,
‘yes,’
I say, ‘it’s like that,
isn’t it’, and we rake the odds and ends,
the smoking tails, the glowing eyes, add them to the pyre
that takes all, and shake hands,
say ‘thanks,’ say ‘see ya later’:
and the heart of the fire glows all night outside the window
where I sleep and in the morning the chest of ash is high and
solemn but within the grey the glow still lurks, shivers
warm,
as if to say that fire grows cool, grows
dark, but always fire:
and now his heart is stopped for good and his fire is burned
in the fire and I hear no longer the
clarinet notes next door
as I prune my bushes or saw a limb that wants a blade, but
some nights, late at night, when the summer easterlies blow
katabatic as they always blow and the eucalypt leaves that
can no longer cling skip along the tarmac drive, rattle along
the
roof, and a pale scent of the smoke of a far bush fire
blasted by the wind
teases at my nose, I think that I seem to
hear a pressing of air, a breathless mouthing and blowing
and tonguing of ladderings and phrasings, snatches of sounds
of a clarinet, and I nod to myself as
I lie quick-eared and
sniff at the
night, wondering how close, how fast, the fire leaps