for Mary Maclean <br /> <br />Many have been more exotic places, but this <br />you offer us, a taste of our land. The air <br />so crisp with chill we wear entire wardrobes <br />like hunters' furs - jeans over track pants, <br />footy socks, beanies, scarves. Mary's roo dog <br />does our hunting: an emu caught by the throat, <br />plucked and thrown whole on a cooking fire, <br />smoke full of singed feathers and flesh <br />stings our noses. We wrestle with tin-canned <br />standards in words the wind blows away. Huddled <br />'round campfires morning and night, we go where <br />the sun breaks through as day unrolls. Breakaways, <br />mulga bush, a never-used dam a hundred years old; <br />this place of bleached bones and broken glass <br />queries our presence, unwashed, awkward on <br />its unpaved ways. Marrakesch, Kathmandu - tales <br />of former hikes, but none so raw as this our land. <br />Whose land? Our week is up; we take away <br />film rolls, rusted horse shoes, and ochre rocks.<br /><br />Andrew Burke<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/none-so-raw-as-this-our-land/
