I dream of painting:
dipping the brush in colour and watching it streak across canvas.
An ochre red undulating line:
the earth, singing.
Above the ochre line I would splash ultramarine,
a vivid intense blue, a pale reflection of our southern sky.
The blue hovers over the land, blessing it with story and spirits.
I would add a dirty olive for a tree, thirsty always,
with leathery leaves to save the secret water:
leaves trailing down and rattling in the breeze.
I would paint this breeze to soften the air and
to lift the ochre dust
so waves of red would lap the shores of roots and Spinifex.
An angled kite of brilliant white – of cockatoo –
measuring my ultramarine
would focus the sky.
And I would frame the whole with sound:
the wind,
the swift beat of wing,
the crack of leaf against trunk
and the songs of the ancestors filling the dreamtime.
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