Judith Wright - Drought Year

That time of drought the embered air <br />burned to the roots of timber and grass. <br />The crackling lime-scrub would not bear <br />and Mooni Creek was sand that year. <br />The dingo's cry was strange to hear. <br /> <br />I heard the dingoes cry <br />in the scrub on the Thirty-mile Dry. <br />I saw the wedgetail take his fill <br />perching on the seething skull. <br />I saw the eel wither where he curled <br />in the last blood-drop of a spent world. <br /> <br />I heard the bone whisper in the hide <br />of the big red horse that lay where he died. <br />Prop that horse up, make him stand, <br />hoofs turned down in the bitter sand <br />make him stand at the gate of the Thirty-mile Dry. <br />Turn this way and you will die- <br />and strange and loud was the dingoes' cry.<br /><br />Judith Wright<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/drought-year/