Run around the road
that circles continuously
the circuit of Yulara?
Don’t be crazy! Just walk.

Do it at dawn or in
the dryness of night’s dark,
safe from sweaty slumber.
Daytime temperatures climb:

Celsius crests at forty-four,
Fahrenheit flees frantically
farther than the century flag,
up to one-one-one.

A short-circuit exists,
a winding red diameter
drifting up a sand dune
spinifex stabilised.

8 am is sunny but today
the heat is on strike,
sleeping in. Only thirty.
No bus waiting, I walk.

Red dust climbs runners
as I stride, accrues on soles,
accumulates on shoes,
sticks as blood on laces.

Half a billion years past, a river’s
water washed its debris down,
separating sand and silt
from stone and scree.

Covered, compressed,
converted into conglomerates,
tilted turned, uplifted
Uluru and Kata Tjuta.

Blood is built on iron,
breathing in our lungs.
Desert dust, thick as that sticky
fluid follows me to the summit.

The land lies flat all around
except one sector, overpowering
all. Uluru lies monolithic,
holding back the horizon.

Red! Red! Red! The land
shouts of spilt blood:
emus, goannas, wallaby.
Aṉangu: Unnamed numbers.

Uluru squats in silence,
a pebble unstirred, unperturbed.
How many heated summers
hide beneath its horizon,

humbling me and all
our generations with antiquity.
...
I step away with my conscience
To gather breakfast from a shop. 

			3 March 2024