WANDJINA
Maureen Clifford ©
The Scribbly Bark Poet
The days before
were hot and dry, the months before as well.
At times a bank of
clouds appeared -but just as quickly disappeared
a misted mauve
light bathed the land and in the paddock he would stand
talking to ghosts
with spirit voices – not one bloke down
here rejoices
we are walking dark pathways all leading
straight to hell.
Long days
continued hot and dry with no relief in sight.
He watched his
money disappear along with hope and now his fear
was soon that he
would lose it all and that would no way be his call.
He struggled daily
with these things, perhaps his thoughts had paper wings…
his night-time dreams offered no rest and little in respite.
The land wilted
beneath the heat, and now paddocks were bare.
Dark spirits from
primordial times were in each rock and tree,
he felt himself
held in their arms. Land – you belong to me
and though clouds
came to tantalize not one drop fell from out the skies -
he saw grey cloud
crevasses drifting by on the thin air.
He now recalled
his father’s voice – it rains at end of
drought.
He rubbed the
sacred rain stone on a boulder ancestors had known
and drew the
dreamtime serpents curves in dust, the rituals he observed.
He threw his
boomerang up high to cut the clouds and let the sky
release the
rain. But had they heard? An element of doubt.
That night he
slept a dreamless sleep, beaten and out of choices.
And in the
distance thunder rolled, the hot air cooled, the night turned cold.
The gum leaves
rustled, turned their faces as the storm fronts wind outpaces
rain that fell
vertically down to parched earths arms, dusty and brown;
as he slept on
exhausted, soothed in sleep by spirit voices.
.jpg)
