seven days of new land

I haven’t been staying on this farm long, just these seven short days, only long enough to know the names of the dogs and the people, not long enough to know what the good days are, not long enough to know what the bad days are either, but I can see that the land needs rain and that the groves of macadamia trees need phosphate or lime or just money, really, that being the thing that makes farms run, ‘cos even the good ones need money first to become good ones, yes even a place like this, caught between the mountain that the aboriginals say is a place for boys to be made into men, yes caught between that low sacred and tree-hatted mountain, between that and the coastal rocky edge the sea is always leaping onto just a mile to the east, caught here to hear the crickets, cicadas, big black parrots, bats, frogs, to hear all these things and the dogs too, when they bark to hear their own echoes bark back at them from the mountain edges, then bark for that as well, caught here where the vegetable garden water comes from the small grass-lined dam at the bottom of the hill below the house, until it runs dry in maybe a month, maybe two months, caught here waiting for the lightning storms to light the forest up, to bring fire to us from the west, from the other low mountains nearly like the sacred one and then to be caught here, one road out, caught here to smell it coming, to feel it, to make for the farm dam and wait and wonder which way the wind will laugh, leap and ruin if it comes, so no, not here long enough to know all that, or to know the women, the three women who live here, not long enough to know their passions, pastimes, poisons, not long enough to know which might be open to being taken, not long enough to know even how long that might take, the taking, or if it will be ever at all, the taking, and not long enough, either, to know the sound of the rain on the un-insulated tin roof, but I do know that when it comes, the rain, then this place will sound like childhood nights tucked in close by a mother who loved her son if only for his body heat, and we listened with small breathes to the rain falling on our own tin roof and it felt safe to sleep, ‘cos even bad guys don’t bother going walking in the rain she said, so no, not been here long, not long at all, not long enough, I guess, to know anything, but then again, even if I die a lifetime here, that idea, that not knowing, that ignorance of even the things I think I know, that will always be the constant, and for that it never really mattered where I am, or for how long, in any way at all.