Notes About The Poem

Written 3rd August, 2026 for Pleiades Please Poetry Contest sponsored by Rob Carmack

Sisters

for Kungkarangkalpa

Sisters, scattered starlight,
Songline stretching sunward,
Stalking, tireless shadow,
Sudden leap, skyward bound,
Stars, seven silver flames,
Silence, seventh, hidden,
Still they rise, slow and bright.


Note:
Kungkarangkalpa, the Seven Sisters Dreaming, is one of the oldest and most widely shared creation stories among Aboriginal Australian peoples — its songline (a sacred storyline tied to the land) stretches across more than half the Australian continent. It tells of seven ancestral sisters fleeing an unwelcome suitor across the desert; to escape him, they leap into the night sky, becoming the star cluster known in Western astronomy as the Pleiades. Their pursuer follows and becomes the stars of Orion — which is why, each night, Orion appears to chase the Seven Sisters across the sky. Traditionally only six stars are visible to the naked eye, and many tellings — from this Aboriginal songline to Greek and Lakota myth — explain the mystery of the hidden seventh sister. This poem is written in tribute to that story, and is dedicated with respect to the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara people, the traditional custodians of the Kungkarangkalpa songline.

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