THE SOUTH WEST: Cape To Cape: Camp Site

there is no voice but the damped down bump of the sea behind the dunes that stop the wind from the south that
blows cold, it blows, it blows through the dark:

there is no voice that speaks of the hour, of the day, of the track, of the camp, of the bush, of the sky, of the night,
of the wind that blows cold through the dark:

there is no voice in this sheltered hollow, there is nobody else in this place, there is nobody here to ask, to answer,
    only the wind that blows through the dark:

      insects beat at the hissing lamp, the aluminium billy throbs on the stove, the leaves of the bony peppermint trees
flap as the wind rushes overhead in the dark:

   what if a man with a voice of the waves that dump, beat down on the beach should come in from the night through
the dunes, through the heath, through the bush?

what if a man with eyes of fire should come down the track in the dark and sit at the table under the tree where I
heat my meal and say ‘here I am, mate, at last ...

   it’s good to find you here … you don’t mind if I share this place with you? … I’ll be no trouble, mate … and
   I'd like to hear how it goes with your walking ...’

does he stand out there in the dark? does he watch from beyond the circle of light? does he stamp his feet as he
waits to come in from the wind and the dark?

what if he should stride into camp and say ‘g’day’? … would I look straight into his face? and ask him his name?
offer him bread, a slug of soft warm merlot?

pretend that there’s no reason to worry when a stranger tramps in from the dark? that some other bloke was bound
to turn up? so that, yes, he was half-expected?

   there are shapes, there are shadows, there are glances among the leaves, and rustlings like the clearing of a throat,
  the scratching of a chin, the shifting of boots:

the hovering of absence, the hesitation of presence … is he there? he must be there, someone is there, wanting, but
he waits, in the fringes of bush he waits, and he watches:

   why does he not come in from the dark? why does he wait there, why does he hold back? why does he watch, what
does he want? why so polite, and so patient?

    perhaps this is his place, perhaps he camps here night after night after night, walks in from the dark through the dunes
and says ‘good evening, how are you doing?’

and sets down his pack and unrolls his swag and boils his billy and stirs the creamy pasta and says ‘so what about
you, mate? what do you have to tell me, mate?’

but for now he still waits in the dark and his voice does not boom and his eyes do not flame and his boots do not
creak as he walks but he stands and he waits in

the tightening night and soon I start to think that he surely wouldn’t mind if I put my head down now, that he would
   understand, that he knows what it’s like to slog

   in to camp at the end of the day with a pack and a blistered heel, and so I choke the lamp and worm into the tent
   and the bushwalker sleeping bag and hope for the

best and think of the day to come when I will shiver in the early morning fog as I take the sandy footpath through the
   dunes to the beach and turn down south and walk the

      soft-sanded beaches and the limestone cliffs and the rocky shore and the slopes of heath and walk on, press on to
   the last breath of granite that splays, bleeds to the salt …

        walk on, go right on to the end of the track, to the cape, the Leeuwin, to the lighthouse, stopping here, stopping there,
  with burning ears, to listen for the voice that almost speaks