The Millet Cutters.

First light streaks pastel pink.

Mist floats on the river.

Cattle stand quietly

under bamboo clumps.

A willy wagtail flicks and fidgets

on a strand of barbed-wire.

Millet grows in neat rows,

tall and straight, ready for harvest.

Five men gather around their utes,

cane cutters in the off-season.

Laughter. Hard men,

status wrought from endurance.

In the early light we move 

backwards through the rows,

then the glint of sharp knives,

chug of tractor, the trailer filling,

sweat, heat, smoko, hot black tea,

colour in the western sky,

and the tired, slow walk at day’s end.

Those men are long gone.

Time took their bodies

and machines their work,

but I see the fields in harvest,

the quiet men gathered

at the long day’s end,

Bull Williams, needing to be fastest,

Carusi with his broken English

dreaming of his own farm

and gentle, generous Mike,

who’d fought at Milne Bay,

now backlit by the fading light

as he moves through the rows

with long, easy strides

towards his waiting ute.

First published at Silver Birch Press.