Scouts for the Departure

A woman I’d never met said, ‘Go:

snow awoke me with its brilliant

neverwarm.’  I never found out

what she meant, but signed up for the

vanguard, more or less as instructed.

Going, we arrived in strange fields,

deep in memory, entirely alone.

Several months went by, after we

were sent from poor old Australia –

a care-worn decision, made by

folks we’d never paid the proper

care.  Now they had the un-say,

they decided they wanted us out

and no remorse would sway it.

In that time, not once did I dream,

or not that I could recall on waking.

Every morning was as a dumb verdict

on events to come: only looking ahead

to the end of the day, no memory

of pledges to move forwards together,

a nation’s clichés brought to naught.

We were as broken; we were as scattered

to the striving winds; we were as made

by the one who would not love us,

the thing we could not have, the home

we could not inhabit.  That loneliness

is the freedom with which we comfort us

down the dispersed ways of exile.