We drove up a red dirt road and rolled into a bare dirt patch in our blue Toyota Corona station wagon. We went because T-roy wanted to go. There were a few other cars parked and a few people standing on the edge of The Grotto.
The Grotto was just a steep stony sink with a green pool at the bottom. A high stone wall, taller than a house, contained three sides of the grotto. A stand of scrub closed the fourth side.
We crept down a steep path. Some girls were climbing out; their dad waited at the top of the wall and watched us. T-roy changed into a tiny swimsuit like European men wear on the beach. E-thang and I stripped to our boxers.
We swam. It felt so good after driving in the desert. We were all tired, sunburnt, dehydrated, hung over. It had been days of driving, months for some of us. We jumped in and splashed. It felt great.
After some time just swimming and laughing, we saw a giant snake coiling at the surface of the water, swimming like a sea serpent, disappearing and reappearing.
Australia is not safe. It is surrounded by great white sharks; its rivers and coasts are home to giant, toothy amphibian lizards that eat more than a few people each year; it crawls with spiders that kill; signs on the beaches warn of jellyfish that kill; and in the grottoes swim snakes that kill.
We climbed onto the rocky shore and then up the path with our bare feet, clothes hung over our shoulders and shoes in hand. Ours was the last car. The sun was way out over the Indian Ocean and a baked plain separated us from the coast. Small trees cast long shadows on the land. We wiped the sand off and drove on toward Darwin.
I:
There were three trees
all 120 years old
all cottonwoods.
I never noticed them
all in a row
all along the seasonal creek.
But you can imagine them
all ten feet around
all mossy.
There were three
all 120 years old
all cottonwoods.
Yesterday, two were taken down
lopped and chopped
to stubs.
II:
Trees are not like people:
they do not think about other trees
they can’t understand a damn thing.
They can’t live on the love of one person alone, as I can.
Trees live on the love of many:
on the love of the burbling creek
on the love of the birds and the squirrels and the raccoons creeping low
on the love of young people, frolicking carelessly.
Everybody was young under those trees
especially the men with their saws
especially me.
III:
There were three
they were all cottonwoods
they were all planted in the same springtime
they all wintered together, cottoned together, yellowed together
120 times.
Only one remains.
We’d just thrown all the sacks of beans up onto the railroad car when Foreman came by to say, “take them off now boys, we’re fixing to roll out,” so we took them off. The dust from those sacks of beans was much worse if you were on the ground catching them (as I was) rather than up on the flat car throwing them down. But soon enough we got the sacks down and stacked pretty good on the ground next to the tracks, coughing bean dust as we went. That’s when Foreman came up and told us “get those sacks on the car boys, what are you waiting for?” He was right. So we on the ground handed them up (I think the dust is worse if you’re up above slapping them in stacks on the car). Then the car was loaded and the rest of the boys hopped down onto the track behind or in front of the car. Foreman came by and said “hop up boys and throw them sacks down.”
When the sun set that day I think we’d just finished. All along the empty track in front & behind was so peaceful with an orange shimmer reflecting the sky, and crickets humming and toads buzzing. We opened one bean sack and poured a pot of water full of them & started them soaking for breakfast. We rolled our bedrolls out on the flat car and slept. We had an early morning loading those beans up.
