From Arnhem Land’s River to the Sea

Between the Glyde’s brown pull and the Arafura’s breath,
where saltpan cracks like sentences half-said,
I walk the country that was old before our clocks,
and learn to read a language without thread.

The paperbarks lean inward, pale and peeling,
their roots a rumour written under mud –
they hold the slow negotiations of the flood,
the quiet contracts struck between soil and blood.

A honeyeater tilts its needled beak and strikes,
a small puncture in the morning’s yellow skin;
the mangroves stand on arching stilted legs
as if they’re wading in, or stepping in.

Light does nothing gentle on this coast –
it presses flat, insistent, pewter-bright,
ignites the sea until it whites out thought
and bleaches meaning from the middle of the night.

And yet the tidal creek still maps its way
through channels only water understands,
past sedge that bends and straightens after wind
and leaves no argument against the land.

I stop where the river opens at its mouth,
uncertain whether it belongs to sea or stone –
both claiming it, both losing it by turns,
and me beside it, neither lost nor home.

The mud here smells of iron and of time,
of things that broke down long before I came;
the egret watches from one rigid leg
as if to hold a verdict without name.

I don’t collect this beauty – it won’t keep.
I’m only here because the country let me through,
and what I carry back is not a view
but something older, patient, and not mine to construe.

by Bakchos