Poem on Sunday: Dreamtime of Another Home

Poet Andrew Holden is an Australian citizen, having lived and worked in the country for a few years.  Though in love with it, he is “very conscious that it’s not our land and the way it was acquired and colonised is shameful.”

Staring out of his kitchen window into a very rich and stunning sunset one recent evening, whilst listening to a “fantastic” album called History Has A Heartbeat, which features the didgeridoo playing of William Barton, he began to feel homesick for the only other place he’d call home.

Andrew Holden

Evening sun fills the kitchen window

Old South Wales

Comfortable and easy

Eyes closed, lids a blood orange glow in my skull

From the speaker,

strains from a distant land

Didge growl rasping swirls my mind

with heady sounds and hiraeth

for another home

East meets western sunset

And I am transported back

to where red earth dust dry fills the very core of me

with what is ancient and yearning

Not of my blood

Just touched by dreamtime long time calling

that crept into me

Scorching seeds that grew and curled

around my sense of home

The “Welcome to Country”

careless taken whole

Pinned under the Southern Cross

Shaming my mob.