Drought

Flexmore Hudson

Midsummer noon;
and the timbered walls start in the heat
and the children sag listlessly over the desks
with bloodless faces oozing sweat
sipped by the stinging flies.

Outside, the tall sun fades the shabby mallee
and drives the ants deep underground,
the stony driftsand shrivels the drab sparse plants:
there's not a cloud in all the sky to cast a shadow
on the tremulous plain.

Stirless the windmills, thirsty cattle standing
despondently about the empty tanks
stamping and tossing their heads in torment of the flies
from dawn to dark.

For ten parched days it has been like this
and, although I love the desert,
I have found myself dreaming of upright gums
by a mountain creek where the red boronia blooms,
where bell-birds chime through the morning mists,
and greenness can hide from the sun;
of rock-holes where the brumbies slink
like swift cloud-shadows from the gidgi-scrub
to drink when the moon is low.

And as I stoop to drink, I too,
just as I raise my cupped hands to my lips,
I am recalled to this drought-stricken plain
by the petulant question
of a summer-wearied child.