The apple has been replaced by the vineyard
and the stencilled pine boxes by the French oak.
They are bulldozing the orchards into piles
and the sign-writers are learning to spell ‘boutique’.
Everywhere they are planting treated pine in long rows
and threading strands of silver wire for grape vines.
Some place else has been turned over to food,
and this place is losing its connection with itself;
somewhere in a forgotten field
that nobody owns,
rows of apple trees
grows wild and bitter.
Warrick Wynne
What the Aakron Construction Company,
with their industrial yellow
matchbox collection
are walling in or walling out
is just landscape.
Outside, redundant contours
rolling lines,
sweep of distance
where the creeks went.
Inside, the fashionable curve of a future road
altered lines
grids of quarter acres.
Enter the old paddock
via the new brick gateway.
Cresta views is perfectly flat.
You don't get the name at all,
until you see a crest in the distance.
That's it: there's a view of a crest.
Warrick Wynne
Back to Suburban Margins