Australia

Along the Great Ocean Road

Apparently where they make dingos, outside Perth

In 2009 I visited Australia for several weeks. It was during their summer, and an especially scorching one at that. I spent the bulk of my time away from the cities--in a very small town in the Flinders Ranges and on a cattle station in the Outback in Northern Territory--which should be taken into account when reading the poem below. I wrote this poem in the summer of 2009 (the American one, this time) while in a poetry workshop at the Poetry Center in Chicago. Today I'm sharing it in honor of Australia Day--January 26th in the land down under. Enjoy (?) the poem and the pictures of this very challenging and very beautiful country. 

Riverbed in the Northern Territory

Devils Peak, outside Quorn near Flinders Ranges

Australia

This has been the wrong place for a hushing holiday

for a 2-month break that was supposed to bring a bit of peace

an easy adventure after an especially disquieting year 
of leaking apartments and low-paying jobs 
and betrayals by men who were hard to leave 
even while hard to believe

What I’d had in mind on the way over

while keeping myself entertained on a 3-transfer 23-hour flight

was something along the lines of 8 weeks 
of lazy late-morning wakeups

zany beer-buzzed beach romps

and Kodak-captured kangaroo safaris

through the Outback on air-conditioned

comfortably cushioned backpacker buses

At Mackenzie Falls with fellow backpackers

Mackenzie Falls in Victoria

Me in the Grampians in Victoria...near the beginning

I hadn’t planned for this…

this country 
of bawling and blistered

newly branded calves

and screaming yellow-crested 
cockatoos

whose cries at sunrise

rouse you about as gently

as a burst of fireworks

or a blast of a grenade

this scorched land 
of sun-fried fields

desiccated trees too dead

and bare to even clatter together

a few desperately thirsty 
branches and leaves

and bring a little aural 
relief

to the deserted searing 
stretches of the midday 
Aussie bush

this place of poison waters

where sharks and snakes 
crocs and rays

lie in wait like underwater mines

to sting you 
bite you 
eat you

chase you out 
of the cooling waves

back onto the parched land

into the punishing heat

On the cattle station in the Outback...dry as a stone

A calf getting branded on the cattle station

My shadow on the station during a searing summer

With a local sheep rancher in Quorn

Oh and the flies

have I mentioned the flies

swarming round your ears

like a false lover’s lies

flies up your nostrils
flies in your eyes

flies rudely resting on your lips

as if they were just plums

ripening on a ledge

and the mosquitoes

merciless 
malicious
like the thorns

on a dozen indignant roses

plucked without invitation

and plastic-trapped into a bouquet

On the left is a spider's nest (about a foot wide), on the right a termite hill (about 2 feet high)

Ludicrous this country

for peace of mind and ease of being

curative as a cup of scalding coffee

or a stiff pair of wool trousers

on a 90-degree day

Murdering my mouth (and a tune) on a didgeridoo in Alice Springs

Statue near art museum in Perth, and how I felt near end of my holiday

Yet I wouldn’t say it’s a place 
totally bereft of tranquility

only that it selfishly 
or maybe wisely

tucks away its reserves of calm

in things fleeting and integral

as the exact middle note

of a magpie’s morning song

in things fleeting and arbitrary

as the exact moment 
a pepper tree

chooses to release a burst of its 
tang

for anybody or nobody to inhale

for any wind or no wind

to pick up and pass along

Magpie in Quorn

Tiny Quorn in South Australia

Windmill and well on the cattle station

View from the Pinnacle in the Grampians, where I nearly passed out from heat and climb

This is a country where you’ll learn how to earn 

your sense of composure

to concentrate on the hush

among the clamor and discomfort

to isolate it as you would

the wingbeat of a bird

and safeguard it like the echo of a hidden 
spring

in a dried-up riverbed

silenced by decades of drought

and layers of red dust.

Red dust, ghost gum tree, and me, Northern Territory

Deadliest of all in Australia is the Vegemite