South-West Settlement Scheme
by Glen Hunting

It’s almost impossible

to feed a family in a forest,

or so it seems here.

A frame for this picture

would only torment us with

dreams of cowslip and flume,

or illusions of mastery.

As if we’d not learned,

our government fooled us

again to fight another war

on separate, shifting fronts:

the flies and frosts, trees

the size of castle keeps,

two days’ ride from supply

and decent prices,

and the ones with skins

of burnished coal,

silent as smoke, flit  

and stare at the corners

of all we fret and toil over.

Perhaps they wonder,

like us, why heritage has

become a wheel that turns,

then jams in the mud.

Or why their attachment to

this place can’t summon

our deference, or a plague

to avenge them.

Meanwhile, each furrow

our flintiness lengthens

becomes a tool in itself,

stratifying the land

from decree to encampment,

and laying out everyone’s

dwindling returns.

But they look at us

like they’ve blown our cover,

like they know we’re agents

on foreign soil—told too little,

and left in the field too long.

Glen Hunting is a poet, dramatist, and short story writer from Perth, Western Australia (Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar), but currently living in Mparntwe, Arrernte Country (Alice Springs, Northern Territory). When not writing, he works for a service provider on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands.