Bandilngan (Windjana Gorge)

The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent... Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams.

This morning a lap steel

play of light on limestone.

The gorge is vascular, bleeds ochre-pink through gunmetal grey,

Gaudi's free-forms,

a Sagrada Familia

shaped by The Wet;

labyrinthine caves, crevices,

pillars and folds. I'm thinking now of Jandamarra, of his hiding

places here in the

walls. Rifle shots

ricochet; battles fought

for this is Bunuba

country. High up fine-boned figs, and birdsong is falling in slow-

time for the mirrored

water. The wind

is moved to celebrate,

quickens the silvered

throat of the gorge, and the river cannot resist kicks up its Cuban

heels no matter how

fleeting the mood.

Water like the rocks—

where Wandjina

dwell—remembers all that's over-written; the bodies in a bloodied

river, people chained

and driven on

dreaming paths, then

locked behind bars,

jammed in the belly of a sacred boab; the prison tree within shout

of the longest trough

for watering cattle.

I came as the cattlemen

had come, riding over the land

and failed to announce myself or to ask leave to enter. I came

and I camped at

Windjana Gorge

National Park. Each day

on the bank of the river

busloads of tourists. It's their gorge according to the guidebook,

or some kind of New

Age Jerusalem.

At close of day an artesian

welling of doubt I'll ever

belong. Camp bedding, dry grass and red earth written in silver.

Above my head

a bloodwood, a bare

stencil printed on sky.

A night wind swoops—

a Chinese dragon it rattles the leaves in the trees with its tail,

then it's gone. Stars—

and no escaping

an unblinking moon;

she holds my face and won't

let go. At her zenith she beckons—gravity loosens its ties—I lose

my nerve, pull the wool

beanie over my eyes.

Notes like tumbled stones

sink through clear

water; a morning solo high in the half-lit cliffs; suddenly it's all

song and darting flight;

birds thrill at being

earth and sky. Bare feet

buried in the silt

of the riverbank—all the selves I bring fall quiet. Play in the silken

dirt, dance in clouds

of dust and slanting light.

I'm no longer possessed

by a mind that tells

me what I do or don't deserve; an instrument loosely held breathes

for the brilliant cockatoos

and the undulating line

they scribe. Laughter flies

off the walls, and I'm

caught in the motionless eye of a freshwater croc; rooted to stolen

ground. Tonight my

branches brush the stars.

Shortlisted Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize 2016, published in Broken Ground UWAP