#174 Kevin Brophy 'My brother, my sister'

#174 ‘My brother, my sister’

Though the desert brings us lizards,

frogs, emus, roos, snakes, birds, berries

and fruit to eat, and though we can make

spears, shields, boomerangs, coolamon

and boomerang from its wood,

and though the grasses give us baskets,

head wear, belts and pouches, and though

the desert gives us a story about a star,

a man, a woman and a new paradise

lost forever, and though the desert buries

everything we have over and over again,

and though its lakes are salty, its bores dry up,

and the tourists get more lost every year,

though Christ was a desert man too,

and God is at least as vast as our desert,

we still resent it, we spit upon it, we tramp

on it and dance it down—it is our brother,

our sister, and we must be fighting it,

bitterly, for every small thing we have.