Kati-Thanda It was late August 2009. After record breaking rains in Queensland it was predicted flood waters were enough to arrive by Warburton Channel to fill Lake Eyre. We arrived in time to witness the spectacle of a blinding sun-dried salt pan desert transform.
My poem was in response to this miracle
vicissitudes of lake eyre
bleached salt pans
glint in a hostile sun
their mirage
a phantom deathtrap
in a land of unreachable horizons
yet sometimes flood water
flow
crack the parched earth
eddy into the cavernous silence
and like touch arouses longing
water stirs
awakens a dormant world
into golumptuous life
fish like transparent slivers of glass
brine shrimp trilling tadpoles
become a teaming ocean
luring flocks of birds to roost and feed
a million water birds in a desert sky
a paradise
till drought
kali with a flaming sword
banishes life once again