Ash washed down to this gully.

A sense of trespass persists

like sneaking into an old lady’s

backyard. The trickle

of the creek makes me want to pee.

The hills are angry parents and

we are a pair of ticks,

with our teeth in the skin of the land.

My father tells the legend of Ridgeside,

the long gone family house on the hill.

Even the tennis court is bush now,

the lawn roller hiding under weeds.

We are more than grubby wild kids.

A lost house is proof of the status

we should’ve had. Our edge defined

by a strike-slip fault –

old hard greywacke bedrock pushed up

to the crest of Belmont Hill.

This was just published last week in the scrummy new Jack Move magazine (click "close" to enter the site).

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