Solitude

Abstract

Solitude Damen O'Brien (bio) Out beyond heart attack survivability range,three-bar phone reception territory,the cows will nod at you curtly,renew their deliberations.Engage wheel lock, close the mousetrap of the gatewith a vicious snap.You walk down along the bloated riverwhere the water mocks the pebblesturning them over like speckled eggsand the weeds suspend the sky's relief,twitching with skating spiders and fat mosquitos.That's snake-bite recovery country,clenched teeth and tourniquet.Two bars only and a quicksilver gulp inthe thermos,the boys battering each other withthe bushfire-black stalks of grass treesbecome incomprehensible birds.The cloud presses down, condensinginto a stern drought of mist,strong enough to etch the cardinals from the compass.There is no North.Continue, there and there, a few hundred meters moreand you'll have one bar, air-lift only.Soft biscuit to crumble in your pocket.The rain starts, earnest and inquisitive,finding a sly path through your shirtinsinuating everything, implying nothing,wriggling through the loose teeth of your backpack,beading the camera lens.An ant clambers widdershins out ofthe austere eye of a bird's skull,and that's it for the mobile.Pack rations and a fireman's lift from here.Even the campsite's thin abuse of smokeHanselled and Gretteled this far [End Page 220] is Ti-Tree cleansed,and some unknown birds pinglike a spate of text messages.To go further is the same as going back.To go further is to let the last lifeline go,to find the remaining crags and folds of cliffwithout the phone's mediating square. [End Page 221] Damen O'Brien Damen O'Brien's poetry has won numerous prizes, including the Peter Porter Poetry Prize, the Val Vallis Award for an Unpublished Poem, the New Guard Knightville Poetry Prize, the Moth Poetry Prize, and the Newcastle University International Poetry Competition (2020). He lives in Queensland. Copyright © 2020 Wayne State University Press