Brendan Ryan

Brendan Ryan grew up on a farm at Panmure, Victoria. He has worked in many occupations including driving delivery vans around the suburbs of Melbourne. He has also been a taxi driver. He currently lives in Portarlington and teaches at a secondary college in Geelong. He has had three collections of poetry published: Why I am Not a Farmer (2000), A Paddock In His Head (2007), shortlisted for the 2008 ACT Poetry Prize, and A Tight Circle (Whitmore Press, 2008).

The Carrier

A carrier of cows, sheep, hay and super bins.

The link between paddocks and shop,

the family man with ten kids,

bushy beard and truck cabin skin

quietly spoken, with an ongoing investment

in Mack trucks. Once

he hit a cow on the Heathmarsh Road

yet barely felt it bounce off the bull bar.

On windless nights

his Mack could be heard two miles away,

changing down gears before gravel bends,

working back through the ratios, entering the flat.

The sight of his truck meant work –

six heifers to be schooled in the dairy,

spreading fertiliser into the night .

Summer, I carted hay with him.

Grabbing bales off the loader with a hook

he turfed them like biscuits before me.

Four of us running the length of the tray

sweat dividing our backs, his teenage son

nudging the Mack around 200 acres.

Over months he began to lose weight

his pale frame shelled from the inside.

This man who used to drive a rusting Mercedes to Mass,

children hopping from doors endlessly;

this man who drove trucks for a district,

for a living. Gingerly

his coffin is placed on the Mack’s bogey.