7. IN TIME FOR WINTER ON THE ROCKFACE AT COBAR
if we stay long enough and put our faith in winter rain, there will be vast carpets of wildflowers,
to get the city and country people out here, to get them out of their cars,
on outback pamphlets and postcards they only advertise wealth, the land after rain,
the land awash with plush green and flower galaxies that can only happen in winter here,
but whenever i go out to the new south wales bush, the ground is always barren,
we arrive in time for winter on the rock face at cobar,
a filmed glaze of pink stone on a reflective purple surface, liquid polished stone mats,
a mauve face with mauve flowers too tiny to detect with the human eye,
it is spreading out beneath trees, a thin skin for the black tree roots to vanish into,
the rocks have been polished by fine particles of blowing sand,
so that they look like marbles that have rolled around,
entrapped by one another in a game of chasey in gushing sink holes,
like the gigantic craters throughout the katherine gorge, big enough to sit in,
winter has settled in on the smooth dusk rock face at cobar,
pinkish shards of sharp sediment in-between polished blue gibber steel ball bearings,
the combination of the two making purple land rugs, adrift on the red inland sand,
something for the giant native cockroaches to disturb as they scuttle across,
something for the purple winter sunset to reflect onto, its faint ripple down past pink clouds,
something inspiring for us to drive past, something shiny, jagged, flat, rolling and gapped
for the tiny spring wildflowers to work there way up through,
to spring up through into scented carpets |
