A yawning driveway, crystallised
by photographs. The tadpole pond,
where we fished with jars.
Pine trees and elder siblings
lost in the highest branches.

I cried, stuck at the bottom.
My toddler limbs, bare feet.
Pine needles. Bulls out the back paddocks.
I don’t remember our cows,
but fear sticks. Still

I ran through the carcass
of the old shearing shed,
caught tufts of wool with toes.
Legs and arms speckled 
from attacks with rubber stamps.

Sometimes I ran naked,
with only blue cowboy boots.
A habit immortalised by camera.
Beyond there, memory falters,
a leg lurching into the absence of a stair.

Pictures of brass doorknobs flicker, crack
like green paint or the splintered windshield
of our orange car, relic of a crash
on a country road. Moss grows thick
on the warm concrete of the septic tank.

She’s told me more, how we sent
our favourite cows to the slaughter.
One that lumbered into the laundry.
Bees in the walls for months.
Mostly I wonder how I can dart naked

through memories still and quiet as photographs.