Mud Map

He’d a wall-eyed dog and a baldy mare
   And eyes like amber tea,
And he sent the dog to hold the lead
   And drew my road for me.

He smoothed the dust with his brown palm
   As the leaders began to ring,
And cast a prick-eared kelpie bitch
   Out to the spreading wing.

Where roly-polys, mad old hatters,
   Frolic across the sky,
And white as fresh-shorn sheep, the drifts
  Of rusting daisies lie;

By lonely tree, by broken gate
  By creek and star and sun,
There on the plain he carefully showed
  The way my track should run.

A plover scolded the wall-eyed dog,
  The saddles creaked in the heat,
He whistled back the kelpie bitch
  To tongue at his dusty feet.

I shook the drover’s knuckley hand
  And thanked him courteously,
But he’ll never know how sharp and clear
  He drew my road for me.

ANNE BELL