John Kinsella

Between the mountain and the house
tractors drag hay balers clockwise
around the paddock, guzzling
windrows, coils of twine roping

out in the belly, knots tied
rapidly as hay is ram-packed,
metropolis movements sound-tracked,
che-cha che-cha che-cha,

the bricks birthed rigidly, methodically,
as if nature has come to this:
but the steel and mechanisms
disguise the hermaphroditic birth -

its beauty, its contradictions:
the offspring's placenta, eaten
in the paddock, dark cycles
that sprout like fetishes,

feed the profit. The operators
push in the early morning dry,
little moisture in the yellow bales,
small plumes of dust saying

get it done: persistence
is fruitful. Watched, they continue
unawares, staggered on the clock-face,
winding inwards, to a point

where they almost meet: these blokes
in hats and singlets - midwives,
deftly working the circles, with and against
the machinery's stiff workings.