Martuwarra Fitzroy River Flood 2023
By Nandi Chinna
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