Written piece
Volcano Country
Janeen Samuel
Australia
About this piece
This is a poem about where I live – the Volcanic Plain that extends across Western Victoria and over the border into South Australia. Volcanos have been erupting here from millions of years ago to as recently as 5,000 years, leaving their marks on the land.
VOLCANO COUNTRY
Up from this country
time beyond time beyond time
young hills have risen
bursting like seeds from the ground:
fire mountains
spouting fire fountains,
streamers of red running rock,
heart-blood of earth poured out,
clotting to black
clogging the face of the land.
Onto this country
time beyond time beyond time
new rain has fallen
soothing the wound of the land,
quenching the burning,
and rivers, returning,
have threaded new gullies,
flooding new valleys,
swelling to lake and to swampland:
circle and line in fresh inking
drawn on the map of the land.
Over this country,
time beyond time beyond time,
green has come creeping:
tongues of green licking the stone,
whisper of grasses,
mumble of mosses,
lilting of lichen and fern,
wattle and manna gum chorus:
bass notes dissolving
rock into soil,
green leaves in descant
carolling life to the land.
Into this country
time beyond time beyond time,
creatures have ventured,
feet thudding over the rock,
finning up streamways,
winging the skyways,
scales slipping under and over the stone,
croaking from shallows,
warm breath in hollows,
lives looping over and under each other
weaving a pattern of life on the land.
All through this country,
time beyond time beyond time,
people have been here
giving their words to the land:
working the stones,
shaping their homes,
taming the water to channel and weir,
weaving the green to their service,
naming all creatures their kin,
singing the land into story,
singing it love.
We are their heirs,
we in the present
here in this country.
Ours, then, to nurture
green leaf and creature,
cherish the water,
mountain and stone;
care for the country
singing its story
time beyond time beyond time,
time beyond time beyond time.