The Swamp
By Nandi Chinna
[not published yet]
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.