Outback

The wind blows across empty cattle yards and tailing mounds from old copper mines, across open spaces that spread beyond boundary fences and the reach of railway lines, way out past the rutted wakes left by four wheel drives. Only bones take root out here and grow into phantoms who haunt the horizon, finding voice in the moans that wander the land in search of lost ancestral homes. Something ancient sleeps here deep underground. Coiled in a sacred womb it waits for rebirth. Beneath the quiet cathedrals of vaulted nights you can hear it breathe through pore holes rising up out of the red earth. Far away, corralled inside coastal cities, a nation grows deaf on the din of its own noise. Blinded by the dazzle of unresting lights, it floats the continent dangling clots of shallow roots.