Walkabout

In shot snap seconds, everything changed. The horror was sudden - a shatter-shower of bullets bouncing off rock. The picnic I'd laid so carefully blew apart - black olives tossed into the air like fat flies, the watermelon's pink guts splattering. Gun aimed at me. Gun to his head: bang bang. Self-felled, he was dead. Fire ate the car. The human heart finds hidden resources; I was on a sand-land trek through nowhere, following songlines, outside of time, walking in Dreamtime, dreaming the Dreaming. Unrelenting sun. I was floundering in sand-seas, wading light-dunes, drought-parched, thirsting for drinkwater blue. Sudden oasis of you: flash of painted flesh, brown bark-smooth skin, lizard head loincloth - black buzz of inkspot flies. Windsongs fluttered my sarong like your native flag: black sky-stripe of night, red sand - lifeblood of land - yellow yolk of sun. A pool opened its blue eye - iris of cool. I stripped, dived into crystal water glints, dipped beneath the surface, carefree, soul-freed. Desert rustled its secret sand-script: scarlet sting of scorpion, skin-prickle of termite, echidna's spiny ball uncurling. Kookaburra's laughter echoed upwind. Snake swallowed lizard, quick tongue flick. Dark spear, spearing quick-jump kangaroo - knife-skinned, lopped limbs, sinew strings looping like the songlines. Rock-table land, salt pans, the sun's red plate bottlebrush-scoured. Unspoken words of separate worlds were nothing next to you. We were wall-worded, word-divided, but I dreamsang the silence, hoped you'd understand. And I thought if I reached to touch your bark-brown hand I might penetrate that ancient dreaming land. But never did. My words and dreams stayed locked inside. Distant dingoes' distress drifted on wind... Days sun-seared, nights star-burned. You trance-danced the Dreaming far into night... And I woke to a different dream, found you branch-dangling from eucalyptus, gilt-framed in knife-strike light, tribal feathers trailing. Strange painted man, tree-hanging. I had to go on alone. And I did living a plastic life I cannot reconcile I stare out at plastic-sheeted swimming pools, kids' plastic dolls, a boomerang's plastic scythe. The smoky words of Gasoline Alley billow from the radio; I tune it in and tune out my husband's work-wittering. Look beyond walls, to where you're a silhouette in my mind's Dreamtime; traverse language lines, the heart's strange lexicon. I'm walking the wordless plain again, the sky a simmering cinnamon stain, the sun setting, as hurt-heart memories wane. *That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again. *Excerpt from A.E. Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad'