Night Drive: The Hume

Cath braked hard to save a fox - eyes points of sodium in the high-beam.

From the back seat, I was launched out of shadow and flare-crossed sleep,

crushed to the blindblack floor by that heavy lover, Inertia.

The tyre screamed into smoke, squared their circle,

and we bumped from then on, all the way to Sydney.

Around another bend we began to see scattered milk bottles, a lower starry sky

- then the glass truck on its side, amber pulses and looming cop faces,

the burnt-out wreck of the other truck, and bloody shapes in blankets.

That was near Jugiong in the small hours, the cresty bit that helped earn the Hume

its 'Deadly' epithet. All rebuilt now: dual rivers of red and white.