Tanami

TANAMI


Wedgetailed eagles circle slowly
over spiralling-wide horizons
as the compass of distances
spin to untrammel your eyes;
never-citied walls of clawed rock
crumble off older pathways of matters
mattering less and more as they
dissolve under the source of fire.

Breadth awes your feet to an itch-
walk only to sit down in shaded sand,
like crossing over to a gut-led journey
that sinks humbly with each foot-fall;
the writ prints of feet defer control
here to whatever will be, that will be,
as you are free to seek an I Am
detached for any call.

A man might be lost in the compass
spins of ever-rolling largeness,
as the child is all too
easily lost in the man;
the step by step struggle to embrace
what you see in truth can be too much
for your early little-housed
mirror-soul to understand.

Tanami, Tanami, mulga Tanami!
Am I any longer who I was?
For the desert-telling truths
wring a greenland mind aside.
Out in the Tanami the bone
waits for a breach, the real
reels through to bleach a heavy
body of its false pride.

Walk off the graded track and
side tracks go ever out and on;
carry no water and your tongue
will un-language your throat away;
thorns and needle sunspears will
prick your well-fed bubble
of the soft guzzle of a wet body
you dally in and think you pray.


Tanami true,
Tanami true
Truly I pray..

* * *

-August 1995, Yuendumu, Northern Territory