Drought Year

That time of drought the embered airburned to the roots of timber and grass.

The crackling lime-scrub would not bearand 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 fillperching 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 hideof the big red horse that lay where he died.

Prop that horse up, make him stand, hoofs turned down in the bitter sandmake 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.