#690 - to Dinnah Durri Durri

 

22.xi.21

690

2.326

to Dinnah Durri Durri

 

I am catching the track

feet for a heartbeat, wordless

how it goes on without me

 

years of planning

and more of neglect –

to the flagless country long lost!

 

sweat beaded in the almost summer

a humid fog for glasses now

we turn off here – funny

 

how the track has a name today

just nowhere and peters out, as if

to say – this isn’t the way to come

 

or where you’re meant to be

once we drove – remember?

and the sun stood one side

 

rain on the car’s other flank

echidna then, a roll up

come so far, by flannel flower

 

a melaleuca parchment fall

think of the bark as a treasure map!

even then we ignored instructions

 

eyes fixed on something like dinner

now the road’s past hearing

but there are birds to guess

 

and we are discussing China

anti-vaxers, climate change deniers

reed marsh aside of

 

it is as once the rain fell

now flies here come along

where these our avatars ruled

 

snout first paws forth

it’s any animal’s run round of blood

keep going

 

over swamp – wade it

up from scrub

as on the evening of the fire arrived

 

because brought, gathered

made the camp

improvised a dusk

 

when we were just an edge

come to these wastes for a firstness

as if a desert touch to the sea

 

might make myth of us

the track here – wallaby, dingo,

emu we think, though how?

 

keeps up a cracking pace

sun for high, even cloudspeak

hat essential, track led to, track away

 

those here whom we salute still

far to a future now – ourselves

must make with a mind’s eye

 

till home where the dolphin pod follows

or runs this time the other way

sand crabs mountaineering

 

make scarce – a stumble forth

and far along till the families parked

unknown to us, deep tread and frisbee

 

for their boomerang, passed

with just a wave and gone

then barefoot deep in easy treads

 

remember a tent rolled away

with the wind and someone

inside the wind like a voice?

 

with whose word in which light?

sat like seers, it was before

the invention of yoga

 

ancient libations!  truths of we were

and now to me remembering

dune for a pillow, dreamt worlds to be

 

a satellite would deliver, why not?

any information required

and the washed up, wine dark

 

of the dream, of all the weather at once

retired to just the moment, eke blisses

a tenting of just this much sky

 

kind of a home in far trudge

swag where it falls

‘I’d rather be’ … and now you’re here

 

and here again …we spoke then

of the farthest stars and balance time

knowing the light of books who we are

 

breathless to dune top

it was a game then

guessing languages later to learn

 

what was time but star spun?

where this adjournment was ordered

and now you trickle the valley to pond

 

over that last lip, plash

hear how the sea comes

by foot, as never before

 

remember the amphitheatric moon?

clouds of a phosphorescence

as if this place making sacred

 

completed the ancestors’ flight

there were some moments embodied

others right out of heads

 

invented a name from just what was left

odd attempts at music

go on inventing, never stopped since

 

we wouldn’t know our hearts

but loved

and nowhere else to go

 

at home in a universe parallel

be sure the next flower is out

catch light years here

 

canvas, tin, rope testing

wild nights! and every driftwood fire

we passed a cigarette around

 

they were stupid days

I won’t call the colours

you saw for yourself

 

can I pick midden from godsthrow?

my kit – water, sarong, notebook

the leaves of the stump

 

lost, named the island as well

an oars plash in the one grey sea  

the catch-all sea

 

will we tell the sun how to shine?

already then saw these later selves

come for a glimmer and gone