The Sleepout

Childhood sleeps in a verandah room in an iron bed close to the wall where the winter over the railing swelled the blind on its timber boom and splinters picked lint off warm linen and the stars were out over the hill; then one wall of the room was forest and all things in there were to come. Breathings climbed up on the verandah when dark cattle rubbed at the corner and sometimes dim towering rain stood for forest, and the dry cave hunched woollen. Inside the forest was lamplit along tracks to a starry creek bed and beyond lay the never-fenced country, its full billabongs all surrounded by animals and birds, in loud crustings, and sometimes kept leaping up amongst them. And out there, to kindle whenever dark found it, hung the daylight moon.