‘How good’s the cricket?’

                  

--- With apologies to T.S. Eliot (1888–1965).  The Waste Land.  1922.

Summer is the saddest time, cracking
Gums fall on scorched land, yielding
Despair and outrage, starving
Koalas beg riders for water.
September gave us hope, covering	5
Earth in surprising snow, feeding
A soil with little life precious water.
Drought overwhelmed us, coming in from the distant outback
For showers of rain; they prayed in vain uncertainty,
And went on in sunlight, around the Circular Quay	10
And drank beer, and texted for hours.
And when we were children, staying with the great aunts,
My husband’s, they took him out to a shed,
And he was not frightened. She said, Mark,	15
Mark, hold on to the barrel, and fire
In the mountains, here we feel free.
We read, much of the night, but go east in the summer.
What are the roots that clutch, what buds shoot
Out of this black grief? Son of man,	20
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken promises, where the sun beats,
And the charred trees give no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry beds plead for water. Only
There is shadow around the red rock,	25
(Note this is the Rainbow Serpent's shadow),
And I will show you something tragic from either
Your shadow at morning obliterated by smoke
Or your shadow at evening rising like fireworks;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.