Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 4, Number 1. May 2021. ISSN: 2581-7094
The Ashes
---Josh Cake
I – Noting
It is Friday.
It is only one p m.
It is forty one degrees.
I am breathing ash.
I am the oldest I have ever been, and the
youngest I will ever be.
It is the hottest it has ever been, and
the coolest it will ever be.
I am breathing ash.
This is as good as it will ever be.
I am learning to relish this in hindsight.
Some clowns just gave me an award –
they said I did a great job this year,
raising awareness of climate change –
I am breathing ash.
Nowhere in the blanket of haze
have I poked the tiniest hole.
I wish I had a mask instead of an award
I do not doubt that I deserve a mask.
My lungs cough to ask me,
Did you improve your
world?
Or just your CV?
II – How that happens
Two boys bounce out of a doorway,
teenage confidence like ceramic on the
sticks of a plate spinner,
the dance precisely as mesmerising as the
fall to the floor.
They are talking about going to uni next
year: their future!
The plates are spinning.
One sniffs, Who’s
cooking something?
His friend slaps him on the back of the
neck.
That’s ash from the
bushfires, dickhead.
They’re cooking the
planet.
The first boy laughs something that is not
a laugh,
a hack to retch up too many bitter pills.
He scoffs, How
good's Australia.
The question mark is absent.
The children are on a strict diet of full
stops.
I remember when I thought my plates would
never stop spinning.
As the boys walk on in silence,
I think I have just been shown how that
happens.
III – Focus
Focus on the cricket, says the prime minister.
The ash in my nose helps me to obey,
takes me back a decade to Black Saturday:
charred air, burned sky,
wake early, wear my whites,
my father drives me to the cricket field,
to cross his arms with the other dads and
agree,
This is not fair for the
children.
Twenty two boys cough our way through
forty overs.
Focus on the cricket, says the prime minister.
After the first over, both teams stop to
agree:
no bowler will bowl fast, no batter will
slog high,
because you can’t see a red ball against a
red sky.
We are not here to win the Ashes, just to
survive them.
Focus on the cricket, says the prime minister.
Our coaches used to say that too:
Focus on the cricket
every match, but not today.
Today they tell us:
Look after each other.