Three men in a car,
two up front
And the third was folded in the boot like
a broken deckchair
He, with a shattered finger, vainly traces a knowing line
A chi-ro in brown rust
Me and my bloody big mouth.
I’ll be shaking hands with a few old mates in an hour or two.
“Donald, why the rush?”
This was his coffin, at least for a time
And the stink of petrol an incense from the censer-engine
They who took him, the pallbearers, grave diggers, both.
The half-heard sprite of radio a lament to see him out
And the car itself, a vehicle for his soul as temporary as any other physical form.
Headlights illuminate the midnight bush like all the bright deeds of a Good Life, a tadpole-soul moving through the darkness of perdition
Moving northwards
back home
— AW Donnelly lives and writes in regional New South Wales, Australia.