Lost Boy
by Paul Hetherington

At soft pre-dawn, through the pin-drop silence,
his trousers dark with dew, he heaved himself
over a rail, set out across the paddocks.
The sun was still a guessing-place of light
against the luminescent, ragged hills
on a pale horizon. He knew the path.

Too much argument between his parents
and silent tension like a mesh of wire
had gripped his throat and tightened all his being--
he felt awkward and always unprepared
even though what happened and what hurt
was that same provoking, needless thing.

Now steeper paddocks, the man's-fist-sized thistles,
the lake that was a mirror of pink light
and speckled wild ducks, and wild rose.
He moved with purpose, distancing a life--
the dust motes in his room, the dull, squat hens
that fluffed and clucked at any offered food

and were never different, the brown sideboard
with a decanter of unpleasant sherry.
And clipped rose bushes, the coughing growl
of the ute at morning, warm-flanked cows.
These things he walked away from, with resolve
into the swallowing blue hills of morning.