Brolga Girl
 
A brown girl taps at her shell with her teeth,
eyes closed from the sticky liquid. She taps,
the egg wobbles, she taps and taps.
She cracks into the sun, she’s listening.
 
Sticky liquid spills into the dust, blood spot,
colour of the grevillea flower.
 
Brolgas pound over the plains, bodies
forming one body, dipping, swaying.
 
The brown girl crinkles her eyes, she curls back
to the startled shelter of the egg shell.
Her shell is thin, light still stings her eyelids.
So she comes out, blinks at the brolgas and sits.
 
She pokes her elbows out, pecks at the base
of juicy plants. She tries to trumpet like a brolga,
but her voice, is the voice of a brown girl,
a skimming reed song over the river.
 
For thousands of years, the sun rises and sets
over plains red, gold grasses, shadowed trees.
 
The brolgas search for the brown girl, 
a plaintive voice is heard in the reeds.
 
Sunlight strikes thin, cracked egg shells,
blood spots colour of the grevillea flower.
She’s here, firm body swaying in the wind, 
her song, attuned, listening, a soft melody.
 
karenajoan
​1991

​(Image: Sidney Long, (1897) Spirit of the Plains)