My part of the forest world was a miners’ camp,
A horse shoe, camp shape,
Men lying in wait.
A big boxwood lying flat at my feet,
Grey, broken, waiting too,
Sawn, left, nothing moving.
A chainsaw had delivered a blow.
They will come again.
Brown, crunch, under foot, a drought,
“Not just a monthly drought, for a month,
but an ongoing yearly drought.
(Crunch), we wait for rain.”
The forest standing by,
Nothing else can,
Heat has brought death,
The boxwood, is tempting them,
Not firewood?
The clouds, grey, rolling slowly,
Crunch under foot,
The smell of rotting roo meat,
Slowly wafting,
Across from the hot local highway, wind.
The truth, the drought,
Does not provide milk and bread money,
I listen,
Please, let go of that fear.
Looking for work,
They stand at the bottom of me,
Nothing moves, too hot.
Except ants, tiny spiders and lizards returning,
From brown dusty dirty dams.
The tanks are empty, a pinkish green odour,
A taste of grey,
Roots will have shifted with the thought of damp.
I squat, plop, tired against, the camp.
Droughts aren’t shade;
They are a hot truth,
Stumped growth,
Split spirit,
Revealing my yellow bark – underside.
This is my drought,
A moving hot drought,
A windy bringing blacked red,
Green to brown burning,
A burnt smelt, we all feared,
Crunch,
Dead.
