Navigating the Backroads

home is a tangle of paperbarks
home is dad’s buckled old ute full of brown dogs
home is a black-sanded pathway past the swamp

home is an osprey’s nest rebuilt again last year
home is the sound of glossy blacks cracking she-oaks not far from the track
home is a murky-green forestry dam where dad relocates red-bellies

home is the sound of mum still shouting dad to clean up the side-of-the-house
home is three red-cedar trees grown from seedlings
home is Grandma’s now-framed paperbark paintings finally on the wall

home is being ‘local‘ in a place you haven’t lived for 20-odd years
home is old bits of corrugated iron down the side of the house where dad sources red-bellies
home is navigating the backroads to a tangle of paperbarks

© 2016 Melinda Irvine

This poem was initially published on ABC Open (My Back Roads).