A Quickie

In a hardtack factory
on Water Street
we entertain the suspicion that victory
is rarely if ever sweet

and we’ll almost certainly founder
despite our long slog
through misadventure upon misadventure
too small to log,

suffering a far lesser want
than our County Tyrone neighbor, John King,
whom the Yandruwandha
took under their wing

after the demise
of Burke and Wills,
their pitching out along that far flung Thames
in the hope they might somehow still

their compass in a gimbal
designed by Philo of Byzantium,
bemoaning how their twenty-six camels
were unresponsive to the rum

meant to revive their spirits,
John King troubled mostly by the grotesque
image of one camel spread
naked across a writing desk

with its eye sewn in needlepoint,
John King who would learn
how the Yandruwandha pound
the roasted spores of the nardoo fern

with a mortar and pestle
into stuff almost as stiff
as his great aunt’s bustle
that might offer some brief respite even if,

in a hardtack factory
on Water Street,
we’re confirmed in our suspicion that victory
is rarely if ever sweet.