Ten things about me

Heat waves vaporise the eucalyptus volatiles and rippled air distorts the view.
Leather-faced brows fret-frown and eyes shrivel-squeeze against the glare.
Moisture sinks deep beneath the creek-rock, stagnant pools remain, stink-stench the stretch along.
Clay dams crack, baked bread crust, parched lips, grass-crumbled dust, earth shrivelled bare.
Snakes entwine and she lays eggs, while bandicoots hide underground, and wallabies seem gone.
Still the crickets cry and cicadas drill the air.
They say it cycles round, but this is something worse again, different, something wrong.
Breezes twist-twirl and flip-float the cloudless blue,
Leaves aloft like torn tassels in a desiccated dome
or, like wake-sad mourners, lie flat, layered down amid
dread shed branches, bracken litter, crackling tinder, grey silver, golden brown.
In forest bleached by noon shadowfled and dapple-bled, sunlight seers.
Leather-faced brows fret-frown and eyes shrivel-squeeze against the glare.
And there it is, the spark, the smoke,
the tendril rising long,
the flame and then
the flare.