The Invention of Pigs

Come our one great bushfire

pigs, sty-released, declined to quit

their pavements of gravel and shit.

Other beasts ran headlong, whipping

off with genitals pinched high.

Human mothers taught their infants creek-dipping.

Fathers galloped, gale-blown blaze stripping

grass at their heels and on by

too swift to ignite any houses.

One horse baked in a tin shed,

naked poultry lay about dead

having been plucked in mid flight

but where pigs had huddled

only fuzzy white hoofprints led

upwind over black, B B B

and none stayed feral in our region.