Poem: Kaurnaland Summer
Books & Poetry
This seasonal Poet’s Corner contribution is from Alana Potgieter.
Kaurnaland Summer
She shines
the high hot sun in her mercury sky
bleak with dust
Her rays caress the earth unceasingly
form the lizard mirage haze
the silver fever heat
that sears the dry-sweat eyes
of those foolish or desperate enough to tread
this parched and hard-baked ashen place
while she walks the January sky,
even the shadows are erased
The bleached bread grass
feeble fodder between the glowing stones
court spontaneous combustion in their reedy bones
cracked kangaroo lips pluck searchingly
as they move with arms saliva’d
even the cicadas are quiet
My sheltered cats
invisible in the deepest shaded crannies
cool crevasses of my old stone home
hankering after places damp
while the inadequate evaporative
goes chank-a-chank-a-chank
From the window
mocking cumulus devoid of Modjadji’s blessing
that would have rumbled with majesty
over the savannahs of my birth
when faced with such sustained dry suffering
to drench the earth in thunderous mercy
makes my African heart cry
in Tjilbruke’s place of Kaurna Dreaming
Yet after breathless ages
evening turns the pages
and for those who survived Tindo’s fiery blast
their cool reward has come at last:
When satisfied with her day’s journey
shedding flame and fury
she beds down to her briny hearth
in a final blast
of kaleidoscopic cinematic glory.
Editor’s note: the Modjadji, or Rain Queens, are the hereditary female rulers of the Balobedu people of Southern Africa, with traditional powers of rainmaking and healing. Tjilbruke is an important male Creation Ancestor for the Kaurna people of South Australia whose Dreaming Trail stretches from the area of metropolitan Adelaide to Parewarangk, the Cape Jervis headland of the Fleurieu Peninsula. Tindo is the Kaurna word for the female sun. Citations: variously online, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Flinders University, and City of Holdfast Bay and Port Adelaide Enfield Councils Kaurna studies.
Living in South Australia, Alana Potgieter is a veterinarian from South Africa who takes immense joy and inspiration from the natural world and feels a deep connection to it. She is most often to be found in the garden that she and her husband have created from the soil up, or reading a book with one of her spoilt kitties on her lap.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to poetscorner@solsticemedia.com.au. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.
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