POOR BOY COMMITS POETRY

The tussocks

Well into the tussocks I interrupted ducks

One flightless teenager galloped across the water

And then an explosion of babies

And a mother who did the broken wing trick about a chain away

While I tipped an old cassoulet out for the fish

The rain dug itself in this afternoon

My smoker smouldering some McCubbin into a shin of beef

While ibis rose from the bottom vineyard

To perch on trellis posts in prehistoric rows

And Peter fed his horses as if everything was normal

Philip White

The painting - VIOLET AND GOLD (1911) - is by Fred McCubbin, 1855-1917. One of the artist's Mount Macedon works, it is a recent acquisition of the collection of the National Gallery Of Australia. The poem was written back in the winter, when it felt like a lot of things were about to go wrong in the cosmos.