Homeward:

We walk opal rich soils
Coober Peddy red sands
sun burning the parched bush
Gun-barrel dry tracks
on humanless distances
that swim with tortuous heat
like the deserts of the equator
that equate all men to numbers of dry stuff

We ride bitumen rivers
floating with the solar radiated heat
where our breath is too hot to draw in
exhaled with rivulets of sweat

Flies in clouds and not a cloud in the sky
That evaporates like candy-floss in the mouth, melted
We walk sands too hot for the soles of our feet
redden, whitened, blackened
pock-marked our skins with the probing fingers of solar cancer

Our burning heritage
our centuries of sweating struggle to tame the untamable
to trammel the land with our seeds
so the dry earth casts back at us the dust of drought and indifference

We walk on red-gold anthills
listening to the far-away cry of ancient birds
breathing the bush-smell
seeing the eucalyptus heat haze

Sunburned, we are razed by fire
Sunburned, we surf chromium waves
and resurface to walk the golden beaches,
homeward.