U3A Writing: Earthbound
Cecily Cross’s poem tells of endurance.
In aboriginal legend
your spirit belongs
in the place where you were born –
where your birth-water runs down
into the earth –
and that place will always call you.
I have been born
in the gentle undulating hills,
the purple ranges, by the sea,
on the warm plains and
the salt-pans,
among the mangroves
and under the bunya pines.
I have felt
the dessication of drought
the fullness of flood,
the fulfilment
of plenty
and the juggernaut of the years.
My country will live on
long after the bricks and mortar
have crumbled,
and countless generations
have nourished the earth
or been scattered like ash
from the campfire.
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