by Marilyn Humbert

from Kalamurina

we ramble the basin’s desert tracks,
circle rippling pools, jump patchwork trickles
draining from Channel Country towards Kati Thanda.

our steps over megafauna prints and bones,
giant koala, roo, goanna, marsupial lions
lost in heartland sea meadows.

Dreamtime tribes paddled this vastness
boomerang and spear poised
beside diminishing water.

now miners clog roads
among spindly spinifex and saltbush
scattered pockets of cattle,

wild pigs wallow-foul shrinking waterholes,
fox and rabbit burrows erode creek banks
as the westerlies carry red dust far, far away

where there’s always been a path…