Desire paths
By Annamaria (A.M.) Weldon
An Easterly scribbles havoc
flagfall wind-script
in semaphore sedges
winter and dawn
filigree
swamp’s fringe
beach spinifex, halophytic
grasses and marram
flex, unquietly.
The regolith is etched
with roo paths and clawprints
bandicootheronrabbitfox.
We focus our telescopes
and settle in
to contemplate shorebirds
among the living rocks –
Waaggyl Noorook, fossils
of rare, endangered
communities lost
at ambiguity’s edge
on the cusp of living and dying.
Imagine, microbes exhaling
and ozone translating sky
blue, so long ago
and still breathing
water from out of sight
aquifers under the serpent eggs
thrombolite
waterstones
old as the Holocene
*
Later, we climb eroded ridges
counting how many remnant waders
line the sandbanks to sup on fading light.
Leaning against an outcrop, I
write the litany of lost names –
Hooded plovers, black cockatoos
while behind me on talus slopes
a quarry wind incenses
their absence with lime-dust.
Air surrounds us
with suspended grit –
it is shape-shifting dunes
with a singing sound
that’s sorrowful as disappearing
lakes and rising salt.
Sweetwater is country’s eros.
Fecund in Peel’s supple body
Yalgorup’s lakes are love
inscribed on dry earth, time
uncovering the paths of her
desire, its slow slaking.