The Cusp

the plasticity of time
is always forward and never back..

I haul the larry backwards and forwards in the wheelbarrow,
add decreasing amounts of water with increasing precision,
then flex and search for the rhythms in the concrete slurry.
I look up from the scrape and grate of gravel on the blade
out past the wattle to where the arena meets the bank.
A young mare blows like a chestnut whale breaching the horizon.
She rises and sounds, time and again. Unbalanced. Thrown,
with leathers taut. A radius is drawn from saddle to hip.
My daughter curves away, caught on the radius
yet curved past the radius. Describing her arc in silence
she hits the ground with radial acceleration and radial violence.
The iron swings free and sound returns, but not breath, not yet.

larry: noun, a wide bladed hoe with holes in the blade used to mix concrete.

This was a Commended Poem in the 2005 W B Yeats Poetry Prize
for Australia and New Zealand