Rivers of Life

Rivers of Life


As the first raindrops fall,
the red desert earth releases
the sharp, clean smell of ozone.
I lift my face to taste
the heaven-sent drops;
to receive their cleansing baptism,
their cool anointing
on my thirsty, sun-dried skin.

The long-awaited build-up,
the sultry grey-black promise
of summer storm-clouds,
are finally, thunderously, fulfilled
in the unrelenting barrage
of a season-breaking downpour;
a cascade that quenches
even the sky’s glowing furnace.

In minutes, I am drenched.
Coolness trickles from head to toe;
washes away the summer dust.
My feet are lost in red-brown mud,
as tiny rivulets unite, to form
streams that expand into
shallow, brush-dotted lakes,
through which I splash and whirl.

The earthy waters, fed by heaven’s bounty,
surge along winter-dried river-beds
that Rainbow Snake their way
through sandy, spinifex plains
and rocky, spirit-haunted gorges
of Australia’s red-ochred heart.
These surging, foaming torrents
irrigate a vast desert land,
carrying with them a sacrament,
the annual rebirth of the land.

At season’s end the rivers pass away,
buried beneath those thirsty sands.
Then, almost as I watch,
multitudes of waiting seeds,
aroused by the redeeming waters,
erupt into life, and carpet the red sand
in white and mauve and gold.
In weeks, they too will fade away,
until the next rainy season brings once more
the ozone smell of nature’s baptism.



Linda Visman
23rd April, 2007
Edited 10th July 2007

Central Australia - a lovely place to be.

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