The Living and the Dead
On a parched outback plain,
there is a winding course.
Red gums line the banks
of a once water source.
But sand is creeping quickly,
through drought and failing rain,
so the flora must adapt,
on a parched outback plain.
The black box struggles on;
desert pea seed needs rain.
Quandong wants the wattle
to fight through the dry again,
but when it gets too parched,
life finds the boiling sun,
can be a bridge too far,
so many do succumb.
The living and the dead
keep standing side by side.
One is dressed in green;
one gray with life denied.
One shade for a traveler;
one hollowed out instead;
and accompany one another -
The living and the dead.
On the floodplain of an anabranch
where the soil is dry and dust.
The salt bush remains prolific
where beneath them is a crust.
Parts of nitre bush are dying,
but the rest keeps struggling on.
There’s skeletons of invadors;
sun seered now dead and gone.
Skeletons line the shrinking water
of carp that are deceased,
and carcasses of kangaroos
from starvation has increased.
A feast for roaming goannas,
who scavange on the dead,
beside ravens and the eagles,
until the living are well fed.
The living leave the dead
in their struggle to survive
as they search for greener pasture
once the rain does finally arrive.
The cycle starts it’s journey
that’s been hanging by a thread,
and new life that’s in the ouback
to keep living needs the dead.
Copyright © Lindsay Laurie | Year Posted 2021
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