It wasn’t that long ago,
you could smell it,
coating the breeze
in a fine oil varnish

It sat on the rape seed
sprouting in golden blisters
out of the grass cracked clay
and bunched patterson’s curse,

huddled against fence lines
shaking in the south breeze
splashed with chucked earth
from the harvesters,
lowing in the fields beyond.

It brings down more in the autumn
when the rain slaps across the skyline
sweeping a wave of ice pellets upwards,
leaving broken glass, and swollen dogs.

In the sweat of the evening,
beneath truncated rooftops
swine caught in bunched tides
graete enclosures, sliced pork,
prison sex, nasopharyngeal burn.

Still it brings down, sweeps under the rain
buffeting droplets back into the sky,
bruises clouds;
green to blue to yellow

It brings down in a shatter of heat
beneath the aging sun,
sent grey with the aroma

and sits

beneath fingernails,
in each strand of hair,
on the colour of chompers,
in open, swelling pores,
the grass lies dying

the trumpet sounds,
raceday has come.