Travelling North

As you lay sleeping

As you lie sleeping –
sweetly – I pray,
Love,
I sit speeding to London.

Just as that brown-flecked bird crouches,
loath to break cover
though death approaches.

So does my heart quail.

Back in Gippsland,
we burned our stripped wheat,
foul, oily roil engulfing blonde stalks
that harboured vermin,
weeds.

Small coveys of birds 
must have scurried, unnoticed – clustered
as homes conflagrated –
in surviving stretches of shelter.

And when,
final row was lit,
up... up... evacuees exploded,
a whirring burst of startling anguish,
locust-lifting away... away............ oh.... oh...
so too does my heart crouch
in exile
from you, Love.