sticks and stones

Sitting in the schoolyard

with a stick, a rock, and a hole

playing at being an aborigine

or a bushman of the Kalahari.

because they build no cities

and know the names of everything

even the ones that we don't.

The hills that were dreamt by a crocodile

and sung into being, gum trees where

the kookabura slept at the beginning

and the people still hear them singing

one thing after another, strings of song

knit the continent in a web of dreams.

I didn't know about that, not then, not yet

just some sense of connections,

between lizards and rocks

sand and grass and rain,

the smell of clay. The drop of nectar

you can suck from the trumpet blossom

of a monkey flower, brief:

an instant of sweetness never forgotten.

The sting of nettles on bare legs: that lasts longer.

Who could forget that?

Or wasps that build nests in rabbit holes

so mind where you stick your hands!

Something nicer: a flock of monarch butterflies

resting on a naked buckeye tree.

I mean they were cloaking it, smothering it,

orange and black like autumn leaves.

Except it was spring. I think.

And quail chicks! all these spotted balls of fluff

darting under the blackberry jungle quick and random.

I thought the ground had come apart.

I found a spear point on a sand bar,

black obsidian, slender, crafted, not a scratch or flaw.

Until I dropped it on the floor at home,

broke it clean in half.

All those centuries, nestled and perfect

waiting for a butterfingered ten-year old to fumble it.

Anyway.....where was I?

The schoolyard, yes

with a stick and a rock and a hole,

pretending to be an aborigine

or a bushman of the Kalahari

because they build no cities

and know the names of everything,

even the ones we don't