dilly bag

sight seeing
in the top end, ashamed
to be spotting
dark skin as one would
kangaroo on the highway

museum artefacts…
dad’s boomerang at home
is just like this

string dilly bags,
coolamons, my modern
hunter-gathering…
coffee
in the cafeteria

what thoughts
percolate beneath those
woollen beanies?

red dirt in the creases
of white socks and sandshoes
not cleaning them
for weeks and weeks
after the flight home

the rock, the Alice—
how these words
now slip from my tongue

…wish I had
bought those women’s
clapping sticks
to measure out
this new rhythm in my toes

my burnt mulga
coolamon…carried
in this pale plastic bag

[END]