At half-past five – the earth cooling

All the sweat of his shirt

Soaked up in red dirt –

He tunnels his arm through the weight

Of a bag of wheat, slowly withdraws it,

And sees how the yellow grains

Shiver, as though magnetised away

From his skin, each one alone and trembling.

Walking beside the fence, in another paddock,

He discovers a grain

Caught in the hairs of his wrist;

He bends down, allows it to fall,

And with the careful toe of his boot

Presses it into the ground.

Sleeping all night, sprawled on the verandah of his hut,

He wakes to the call of the pallid cuckoo,

Its blunted scale

Low on the heads of unharvested wheat –

Not rising towards him, not falling away,

But close by, unchanging, incomplete.

Source:

Shapcott, T. W. (1970) Australian Poetry Now. Melbourne, VIC: Sun Books