Graces Road

Rise above it, my mother used to say,
and now she's old, she herself is something I must rise above.
Just now, to separate myself, I turned and drove,
and finding Graces Road, followed its name
upwards to paddocks that a summer of scant rain
had worked into yellow and mauve.
Someone who had loved
this arc of land had turned things so its hay
could harvest the sun, and – who knows? – maybe
without forethought had named its road with a word
that drew me up like first light from grey
to yellow, then caught me in the whole half
circle of the day and removed
me, the dark hills around me like a sleeping herd.

Louise Oxley