Black on White

[I began this poem thinking of the world of white privilege and power

 and ended it to give thanks to indigenous culture and the contribution

 gratitude can make to our lives after reading “Sand Talk”]

Sorry you have had to wait for me

Have you waited long enough?

I have waited too long,

–things are never over

The trials of our bondage are

our sand-talk here,   domination ties,

we’re derailed we are just colonial

wearing.  Listen now to

our handprints   on the rocks assailing.

silence please, and we are staying,

gleaning in every instalment of our

ties to time and our country

Wearing our souls on our arms

doubly, longing to be set free

of the caprices of white or black

and our own privileged coat-tails

and the laissez-faire of our race

The fantails of the black-cockatoo

perhaps extinction in the tribes

and tragedy of external bushfires

Stuffed shirts extolling our enabled

economies and beliefs of enlightenment

a radiance; can now be intellectually

disregarded by words of sand-talk

We are devoured in the imperfections

of our modern world and the fear of the other

The white-face is like an anxiety

in the blackness we smother first languages

or second languages, we creep though our

vineyard of blackened soot and fire

Eden,  trampled by the forearm we have

Created. Do you take my hands to

talk and remember and trivialise

exploitation and surrender,  dance

now to the words of Mother Earth

to make friends, neighbours and habitat

as we mellow in the words of life.

We have sailed to this different shore

to release the white prowess from its

cupboard and diminished it in our sprees

We cannot go back to Terra Nullius

and do shake your hands and

don’t look into your eyes now;

but treat us with your mind-space also

custodians of country and land

writing out of a timeless-land and

its deep imaginings, a country dark-in-heart,

messages the eternal where my own place

is poetry and being a song. It is time to

give thanks to the custodians for this grace.