Spinifex makes me cry

“Spinifex makes me cry”, she said

“And the desert feels like home.”

­­

Speaking plainly wasn’t easy,

It hadn’t been for so long,

if it was,

I would have said,

I wanted to say,

That what she was recognising,

was the Seven Sisters Songline in her life.

And that she and I had walked through it together.

When I was 7,

when I’d walked off from our family around the campfire in the central Australian Desert,

I’d walked away from her

And him

And the way she’d played to get his attention,

She was walking on the Seven Sisters Songline.

And the little sister, had been the big sister,

And walked off into cold, dark desert air

And kept on walking up the songline,

walking on her way home.