Drought Year

That time of drought the embered air

burned to the roots of timber and grass.

The crackling lime-scrub would not bear

and Mooni Creek was sand that year.

The dingo's cry was strange to hear.

I heard the dingoes cry

in the scrub on the Thirty-mile Dry.

I saw the wedgetail take his fill

perching on the seething skull.

I saw the eel wither where he curled

in the last blood-drop of a spent world.

I heard the bone whisper in the hide

of the big red horse that lay where he died.

Prop that horse up, make him stand,

hoofs turned down in the bitter sand

make him stand at the gate of the Thirty-mile Dry.

Turn this way and you will die-

and strange and loud was the dingoes' cry.