Land of a Thousand Gum Castles

I am the blue eyes that stare from mountains,

the red sky when it watches turquoise storms.

The coming, going floods of midnight green,

the tough moving herds under quartz sunsets, 

Castle of bark, the cackling red flames,

red kingdom of the sunburnt kangaroos.

The brown waters, subtle gauze of rainbow,

and the watching, darting, sharp-eyed rain-fish.

Here in my arms, possums have wings at night.

Fairies of fur in their garden of gums.

See them fly in the safety of their trees.

Watch them coil like furred lizards in the shadows.

I send my children to sleep under stars, 

to dance across my ink scarlet deserts, 

kiss the surface of my moonlit rivers,

and watch the grey clouds sink into the sky. 

True life is the most beautiful out here, 

where it is harder to really survive, 

much madder to be intact and alive, 

dizzying under the heat of my sun.