Bookend to a Flood
by Damen O'Brien
Sky empty of clouds and we chew stubble for weeks
until he tells me we are leaving, but there is nowhere,
the Earth is evaporating into dust and desperation.
The drought reveals the land’s knapped skull,
skinned to a grin of granite teeth, the end
of the Earth begins with dust and dubious gifts:
hulls on their blocks, beached beyond any ocean,
piers over dunes far from their tepid shores, the
acid retreat of water, the last days of petrification,
and things better hidden, rummaged into corners,
or drowned for forgetting: dented barrels, wrecks and
disasters, surreptitious concealments, sunken treasure.
The day before we abandoned hope, tossing it like a
wriggling bag of kittens, the scouring dried the middle
of the dam and we could see a bleached and bloated suitcase.
Nothing given over to the nip of eels and poke of turtles
blankly nudging, can do a man good, can re-pour the water
or populate the ossification of our town, dead of thirst,
but my husband dragged it to the cracked margins of the dam
grunting about salvage and stood staring at it with
the raw eyes of a fortune teller whose card will not turn.
I thought of Pandora cupping shadows and a curse, I
thought of the emptiness to be found in a Magician’s hat, I
thought of the bundles buried underneath a silent threshold.
He broke the old locks and swore at the contents, stumbling
from the bones of a little girl sleeping, here in the water of
the district’s last dam. Now there’s truly nothing to hold us.
I wonder how long she huddled in there drowning, while the
great drought baked us, and how long in turn will the wind
push us to wander. Until rain falls again to cover all our secrets.
Damen O’Brien is an Australian poet writing in Brisbane, Queensland. Damen has won or been shortlisted in many poetry competitions in Australia and internationally including the Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the Moth Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in Cordite, StylusLit, Southerly, Island, and many others. Damen's first poetry book will be published in 2021. www.dameno.org