Middle Distance

After a painting by Noel Tunks

Middle Distance

After a painting by Noel Tunks

This is where technology ends,
among rocks and thistles
at the foot of a windmill,
its slow water rhythms.

The kestrel cuts against the wind
while dry grass tumbles with it —
all the browns, the layered life
right down to feathers.

Grass keeps rustling
across the endless plain,
once stilled by an artist’s hand
who loved this light and colour —

until he, too, cut against the wind
and grew weathered
in the middle distance.

---

I guess this poem gives me the opportunity to talk a little about my creative process.
The seed of the poem started with a passion, or an obsession I’ve had recently, about the beauty I find in long dry grass—especially the kind that grows along country roads where I live here in Australia. The other thing about the country here is that it’s late summer and all of the crops on the farms have been harvested, leaving rows of straw and brown soil of all colors baring itself to the elements. In fact, browns and yellows dominate the landscape.
I also remember seeing a painting by Noel Tunks in a local art gallery of long grass, with trees and a line of hills in the background. You can view the painting here. Noel was also one of my art teachers in high school, though we were unaware then that he had painted some remarkable paintings early in his career (but that is a story for another day). So I began wanting to write a poem with his painting in mind. I also knew that he had spent the last years of his life struggling to paint because of dementia.
The first words I wrote of the poem, though, were just a few lines describing a Nankeen Kestrel—or it could have been a Hobby—leaving a fence post and “cutting away” from me as the wind took it. That day a southwesterly wind change had just come through, and when I stopped the car a bit further on there was swamp grass tumbling across the road. The windmills in the area were also running fast with the wind. I took the video footage of the windmills on my iPhone that day.
With the first lines written about the kestrel, the poem then took a long time—maybe a few weeks—to take shape. I would often be working on my poem, one or two lines, in my head while I was working or doing other things. I would add new ideas and lines to a draft developing in my iPhone notes app.
I also went on other tangents while I was thinking about this poem. For some reason I was reading about the history of Albert Camus, and about his early life in Algeria. I was especially curious about what he thought of sunlight and open spaces and the absurd that runs through life. For some reason the landscape out on the plains here at the moment has that sentiment for me.
It’s also true that I wanted the feeling or emotion of my poem to come out through what a reader sees in their mind’s eye in the landscape and the actual sounds of the words. For that reason I’m resisting putting a photograph of the actual landscape with the poem. Below is the video I took that day of the windmill—you can hear the landscape rather than see it. - D