In The Heat

Not being parochial but it was prodigious 
effort in mutilating heat; just the two of us - 
beat records for the oldest pair of pickers 
yet - 130 years. Never thought adding our
ages would account for anything - but fair 
dinkum, it explains a midday sleep better 
and without prejudice... Yeah, well I was 

woken kind of early - an insane neighbour 
spraying macadamias at 2am like it was an 
ordinary event, isn’t a fancy alarm whether 
deliberately set either; but for a pair of guys 
going back to 1967, when we first came in 
contact, and who braved it like old soldiers 
we once were in a rare 

Sort of harmony which makes things easy 
and effort shared is like friendship where 
we equate to the same meanings without 
debate; yet the heat was too real to state 
as inconsequential - nothing dispels that 
effect of sweating, or muscles aching in 
backs too ungraciously aged to ignore 

Now we await the heat’s dissipation; it’s 
less than this morning’s 34℃ and a rare 
but warm wind stirs the air. In an hour or 
so we’ll process and pack 200kg of fruit 
we’ve spared desiccation - thinking of it 
that way expects we’ll need libation too, 
a summation that’s surely certainty
© 10 October 2013, I. D. Carswell