Real Outback Setting

We have sailed

off the edge of the world

into a space

where place

and time

are elastic stretching

seemingly

forever

The watch

- ever vigilant-

over hours

minutes

seconds

strictly regulated

controlling

ordered existence:

receding…

The chartered routes

between places

and faces

that recur,

worn into the folded creases

that map

the paths of our lives:

gone.

Now:

We wake each day

to dream our way

across an ocean

of sky softly

flocked with clouds;

where drifts of cotton

froth the edges

of the highway –

a shimmering current

drawing us

floating

in a liquid landscape

sipping

iced sunshine

exploring

the limits

of infinity…

(Cassy)

This poem was written during a 3000 km motor bike ride through outback Australia. We’d been on a number of long rides before, but David and I had never ventured quite so far from “civilization” and the experience was exhilarating.

I tried to capture the feeling of time and space almost disappearing in a setting where the normal boundaries of existence were pushed beyond the everyday.

The metaphor of sailing and exploring that is introduced in stanza one, shows how we felt like explorers who were discovering “new” territory.

In connection with the idea of setting, I talk about “time” in the world we had left behind; and use a regular rhythm to indicate the way it was ordered.

Continuing the idea of setting by looking at “place”, I extend the “explorer” metaphor with a “map of life”.

The final stanza brings the reader/listener into the present feeling of displacement and disorientation that is experienced when confronted by so much emptiness, and no time limits in which to explore it. The layers of meaning in such words as “flocked” (describing the texture, but also the way the clouds look like sheep) and “froth” (where it acts as a noun – “cotton froth”- and a verb – “froth the edges”) indicate the richness of the experience.