True Story

I bring the baby in, firm fast the door,

settle him with peaches and a show.

Go back to check, and find an empty floor,

peach juice, sunlight, a mumbling tv.

I check the chooks, the trampoline,

his dad in the shed, his sister reclined,
swinging, reading comics on the porch.

‘Bah-Ba?’ I call. ‘Bah-ba’: the faint return.

In the bleached light of a summer day

The colour of gravel and dust, my child

is beyond the gate, across the road, heading

into hectares of bush. Minutes later

and he’d have been a myth, the fairytale

mothers tell to keep themselves awake at night.