What Lies West

Dear Landscape,
I think of you in breath and in sleep.
I think of you, and want to run my hands across the dust,
I want to walk barefoot and lie with my head pressed close to the earth.
It is topography that calls us - we are drawn across shifting desert plains,
And in dreams I am asked to remember.
What history lies beneath the upturned soil?
What histories, horrific or haunting, have built this topography of being into place?
The clay, reshaped and remoulded and reformed.
Relearnt stories.
In your folds, hills, fields and rivers, I have grieved.
For you, myself and the future. For art, the pulsing push towards beauty - your beauty.
To reach your red soil, the ghost white gums,
The sunsets streaking westwards from point to point, the ends of this earth.
East is the beginning point for everything, but in the west
And leaning westwards lie lone roads and deep understanding.
Shifting across desert plains and open sky,
Glimmers of new life appear in the dapples and mottled shades of yesterday.
I know that time will pass and so will my life. I’m scared of getting older, being old. Yet how old is this land? I am nothing. This land is everything.