#625 - talk country

 

18.ix.21

625

2.260

talk country

 

and on it

deep in time

just where we are

 

care

connect

and now

 

consider the ant

and the possible possum

one is the meal

the other is later

then they swap again

 

switch off the engine and hear the country

 

spirit is nothing with ghosts

it’s not blood

skin doesn’t matter

 

and yet we are descended

think things my mother’s father said

his mother’s, hers

things I cannot know

in languages now lost

these make me

 

the languages now lost

make us who we are

 

it’s how we watch with paws and wings

it’s how we climb to see

 

cut the always gobbledygook

 

whose mob didn’t float here?

it’s just a matter of time

and here come the newbies

so pull out the rug

 

nimble be

humans are a late invention

fire kindled, held in fallen leaves

there never were forevers

nor will there ever

 

but look where the bush comes back

if you let it

wake up to where you are

 

country is collaboration

or wipe a forest with your arse

 

we’re stuck with each other now

 

do you see how black white stark?

and come to vote…

 

fair go, here’s luck!

 

will I pull the wool over my own eyes?

sheep on a shilling is gone

to tucker bag

and that’s for Ron

and here come the coppers

am I drowning myself again?

 

… or stand and turn?

 

consider the macrofauna

let’s not eat other now

 

these small steps

nobody everyone owns

 

how ugly this word nation

(world’s deadliest abstraction today)

 

it’s all ‘fuck off’

‘no, you fuck off’

 

it doesn’t have to be this way

 

but come and chew the fat

then breeze it

seasons are all in a tree

 

country is gestural

and signed

we live it

worlds are in each world

 

smoke clean

 

call country

blow the flag away

there’s nothing here to own

 

but first I think we have to ask

where is the Memorial to this Holocaust of Ours?

where’s the Museum of Atrocity?

… of the Great Theft?  … of the Big Big Lie?

where does the Council of Elders sit?

 

questions and more

where things are not right

 

how will we ever hear wisdom

if we laugh the truth away?

 

the listening is where we start

 

talk country

why?

because we’re here

and it’s everyone’s work

no one does this for you

 

see these birds landing

nowhere but this place?

 

it’s every body here

with every body else

you could call this democracy

 

and the creatures crawl off of the coins

it’s not for the never-tamed to go feral

 

talk country

why?

to feel belonging

to belong where we are

so find out who to be