The Ways
by Marjorie Main
When you wake, and again when you get home, walk out
into the cold and go round the farm.
Just walk. Think nothing, but know your breath
is bringing in the outside.
It begins as an adventure, to be alone.
The wind coming in from Antarctica
is company enough of an evening,
cutting cold across the paddocks.
But somehow, it stirs you up
as the old gumtrees flinch and creak,
their damp leaves winnowing free;
seized, just as you are, by something.
Go stand on the stone helmet of a hill
or in the plunging midst of a paddock of grass.
Stand in wait for an idea of yourself
that seems as if it might grow steadfast.
Keep turning to take in the horizon as it slips
away and think again about what lies
beyond vision, past the ways you know
of how trees bend and wind moves across the waves.
Do this as if in preparation, for you know not what
will come afterwards. Follow along the ways
where you’ve walked before,
going into what you have come out of, again.
Marjorie Main was born in 1994 and grew up in Torbay, Australia. She currently lives in Melbourne, where she is completing her Honours at the University of Melbourne and putting together a poetry manuscript.