PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

(i)



Grey gum washed over blood stock red,

deep as the black of a star torn night,

shot bright silver and suns on the spray

of an ocean in a bay

carving the arc

reflected darkly

of a beach ten thousand miles away:

the many stained,

this land is





and is sweat on stone,

this land,

her skins alive with the patternings of

brittle leaves and rusted trees

and ochre mud from crystal rains;

the colours of the serpent flowing

through both the palette

and the painter



Summer fields of grass

tanned, strawed and burning;

summer's storms, blessed accursed,

delivering both the rains and flames

beneath towering, ashen clouds,

come most in bright blinding promise

and leaving most in burning plains:

of mosaics and mesmerics, this land is





and as she speaks in flames,

in withering tongues,

of mundane death and naked bones,

the charred remains of intemperate seeds,

such seeds as there are still

she preserves in silence,

to be cherished, fed and cradled through

the cycling rhythms of

seasons counted not in months,

but years,



and years of years.



while with subtle scents on blue ranges, shimmering

under breathless airs and frosted skies,

she tells long tales of stolen miles

the winds have chanced

to carry still

the sweat of sea

wayward, swirling,

and

old;

but not forgotten.





(ii)



By wizened wisdoms torn,

her kingdom comes now, reborn

not from the mother’s breasts,

not from the ocean’s dreamings,

but in parched dark clouds

that raised in summer's scything winds

are flayed adrift from outback plains

like shedding skins, to fall

and duskily pall the coastal cities’ skies;



and stark,

the dust motes cry:



Long ago we should be

Long ago we dust away,

Long ago, but chose to linger

on-awhile

beneath this cryptic caravan of

vagrant clouds and stinging stars

and



thy crucifixion's bloodied sky.





and the shaking of the motes,

is louder now

than the thunder of the summer storms,

and the raging of the ocean’s moans,

and the patient, rhythmic beating pulse of

the mother's red, red dreaming.





(iii)



This, the many stained,

this, the ancient land

is all things in all seasons



yet this, our land,

it seems never was



the renovator's dream

we dreamed about



never was

the empty land we read about



never was

and never

never

will be





(iv)



In the quietening of the dreaming,

if we but listened, would we hear



in the whispering of the seasons

in the leafing of the years



would we hear

the mother’s voice speak to us



we of the ships-who-settled-late,

we of the never-being-here,

we who came but are yet to actually



appear from behind our green flung dreams?



if we but listened,

if we but learned to hear?



even we who are too brief by far

and too smart by half,

to understand what sinews bind

flesh and blood to the spirit’s heart,

or what rites of passage were long endured,

before we were fetched

and over which now we sketch

and etch

these

loud, proud tattoos,

and these vain,

unmanly scars.





(v)



In the quietening of the dreaming,

if we but listened



in the whispering of the years,

if we but listened



if we but learned to hear



as children?