(Desert Wind)
The choreography of dust
and wind exfoliates and spins
out of the parched places
of a dustbowl that is never
still - eroded plains where sheep
and kangaroo devour hunting-
grounds, until only the spirits
of the dispossessed remain.
The dust comes whispering
of bones that sang, and plains
of game, the songlines of the ancestors
stripped bare, the native foliage flayed;
sibilant in scything air, it hovers over
bowling greens, in cities of the tropics
living easy in the shade.
This city, looped along its river,
azure coolamon of bay, turns its back
on messages from towns of spinifex
and haze. Crow-cry rasps the morning
like a rusty blade: ghosts of a parching
continent are moving in.
Coolamon: a basin-shaped wooden dish made
and used by the indigenous Australians.
Westerly
© Copyright: Jena Woodhouse, 2003
Свидетельство о публикации №103032200213
Свидетельство о публикации №103032200213
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