Martuwarra Fitzroy River Flood 2023

a translucent baby

gecko on the kitchen benchtop,

wallabies huddle on verandah 

boards slap slap a cow knee-deep 

in the back of a waterlogged ute

the road is gone, we live 

on islands Rivered from the world

wade out from our houses,

storm clouds surpassing our stride

there are no hierarchies

brown whorls have eaten that

laved path an untrackable scent 

we don’t know where to place

our feet, mud enters our marrow

for the first time in years, in centuries –

in-step with the oldest heart in the fossil record,

Gogo fish’s earliest awkward

galumph out of Devonian swamps

mould grows up the walls

slosh through the supermarket

aisles rattle cages empty shelves

float out drift out

terror looks the same in any animal’s eyes

going under lungs filled with sludge

we watch from the bridge

the river’s thunder knocks out pylons

a column of bats kilometres long 

tears apart the bleached sky

dragging broiling rainclouds

upriver behind them.

Islanded from each other

by the loss of our starry skies

our animals and their iridescent country

pouring now out into King Sound

lights go out darkness laps

over the edges