＃７３

    From the lover-padlocked steel firewatch tower cresting that great spinifex hill that drops away from you like the curvature of the earth, he can see to the ocean—polarised electric blue, burning a wide and glittered crescent round the peninsula's scrapbooked demountables, RVs, the futile char of the old brick abattoir somehow torched for insurance moneys. In that butcher-dearth he now found future, labour's promise . . envisioned red poincianas by a playground . . not like his son, whom the economy had failed greatly and who justly took the char as emblematic of his beggared dreams.
    In time, son would accuse father of dispositioning him this way: to outcasting himself, jaded young, to have life skim by from the bench - of failing to inculcate that irrational, whole-heart optimism that drives young men to success - of unconscionably fostering a generational lament only to move on, heal separately, leave son to grapple it alone. And in time, his son would die, and the char would be clay-paved over, red poincianas jostling in the breeze as father, watchtower clumb each sunrise, here pens memories of his son on dark brown paper and sets them flutter to the sea.