The Swamp

When the first rains have percolated
through sand and stone,
sponge and bone, and the frogs

have hatched from their tombs of mud
and are singing in the sedge grass;
we turn to look east where the bleached
limbs of melaleucas make ghosts of time;
suburbs fall away and we forget
our urgent imperatives;

our feet sink into the lakes edge
giddy with the sky’s reflection,
dugite curled up around its appetite,

on the edge of winter
when the earth is regurgitated as water.