[i]

No soaring pain could match her, draped across a dying flame.
Like cinder,
                    she whisper-whistled through lungs thin, teeth sallow,
a promise in song.

“Towera jinner mulbeena,
Poodinyoober mulbeena.”
        
    It was a good promise;
    belonged to everyone
                                   and wouldn’t change for Tomorrow’s ranges.
It asked for nothing
but patience and faith.
                          From where she lay,
                                              the trees, gums, were akimbo.

[ii]

                          For generations she had walked, through the wettest of wets and driest of dries.
       With hope in her ribs and a nature savage and pure.
                     You could break her, throw her to the cockatoos,
                                                      ­And yet, ***** and punctured,
                                                 like driftwood, she would drift back,
                                                           ­                                                                Blossoming in your lap again.

[iii]

                      When the kangaroos have done their dance
                                                 in the twilight.
There she'd been.
Supine. Broken open and
lily-white (on the inside).

                                                  
    ­                                        and we did this.
                            with our prospecting and land grabbing

                                      we did this,
                      with our parking lots and Starbucks cup

         she was dismembered, priced, "loved," owned.
                    
                                     discarded.
                                            to the meek edge
                                       of an eternal flame ****** to embers.