For Fred Williams, d.1982

Even the landscape painters
had this in their bones:
sulphur of blue-gum
black of wattle
and bare,
bare of people.
Forbidden places.
Isles.
Artists’ impressions lie.
Too much gold.
English idyll onto fierce dark.
The cushioning sky can’t help.
Fred Williams was right:
one stick plus one stick
signifies the lost plenty.

(First published in Island Magazine, n.19; and in the collection, ‘Isolated States’, 2001.)