It is a chill day in summer.
It reaches 50 centigrade
in the shade here
at this time of year,
but today it’s bone-cold.
Reptiles have buried
themselves into the ground’s
infrastructure: rock piles, tunnels, burrows,
fallen branches, trees upturned
in winter storms, building
debris lying around.
We rug up and walk
under stormy skies.
How many degrees
of separation? My guide,
Tracy, tells me that Aborigines
make up half the prison population
of Western Australia,
that Aborigines
make up three percent
of Western Australia’s population.
This property
is fenced. It is cold
today on neighbouring
properties as well:
they are also fenced.
The roadways—owned
by the government,
are the only pathways,
around these properties.
Walwalinj, mountain
at the centre of the region,
is a beacon the liturgists of leisure
launch from: they have
hoodwinked the Environmental
Protection Agency
who say that their activities
affect nothing sacred.
The local primary school
has a Walwalinj award
for the most outstanding
indigenous student.
It is a cold day
in a hellishly hot place.
In the low places
the salt thickens
its ice: Cocytus
where brothers
cleared to grow crops,
betrayal divined in crystals
that edged the wet places
like frogs emerging
from fracas of tadpoles,
lapping at the edge
of water getting saltier
by the acre, feeling climate
change like a hammer,
welded together
in the ice of a hot,
familial place.