SO MUCH once depended on them—bone, shell and metal. Once these buttons fixed cloth, fine or course, at chest and breast, at wrist and crotch, keeping overlapping cloth from flapping. Today, in a jacket of many zippers, I search for them, scattered in paddocks; I discover them covered in dust in rubbish hillocks, hinting at inhabitants long gone from the homestead on the hill.
Read Morewhen we were wedgetail, we were
beak clever and feather proud. we would
comb the contours of convection,
tickle the fickle wind, patient as mountains,
gliding on grace.
At any given time on our farm south of Cobar, my family worked with a team of four to five Kelpies. They were kept in peak fitness mustering goats, sheep, and occasionally cattle. Their short-hair coats were sleek, and they ran for miles in all conditions.
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