Hard Learning

~ For Poetry in First Languages Arrernte leaders Janette, Declan and Carmel

Curtained off from

all known things

were lessons

enshrined in sand—

wisdom carved out

the old way,

with fingertips to Red Earth

in salt bush scrub,

a fire crackling close by

Lessons

in Arrernte

of sparkling Yipirinya Dreaming—

softly spoken by an Elder

in the cold of winter

as rain clouds formed

over chapped ranges

Wisdom

that could only be told

as the drought broke,

in the company of

coolabahs and brumbies

children and healers,

to a saltwater woman

far from home—

who needed to hear it.