The old lady and the boy
This nation is a thoughtless and mean
adolescent chasing relevance,
knocking down his grandmother,
stomping over a country
as ancient as dreaming, older than time.
While rains and rivers turned mountains into valleys,
trees and crocodiles, wallabies and humans,
grew, reproduced and died
in her deserts and forests,
and on her plains and shores.
Life ebbed and flowed
in gentle waves
around the millennia,
through seasons and cycles,
fires and floods,
until Australia was born
and everything changed.
Adam and Eve were thrown out of Eden,
the people torn apart from the land
in a brutal and sudden divorce.
Trees were cut down, crocodiles shot,
new creatures and disease arrived.
The waves of life
turned into spikes,
jagged peaks on a chart,
in pursuit of perpetual growth,
the impossible dream.
Now the teenager rages.
He wants to be bigger and better than the rest.
He refuses to accept the limits,
but it is the old woman who makes the rules.
She knows the way things work,
every action has a reaction and in the end
balance must be restored.
