Local Man, (Australia)

I sense you slowly flit from gum to gum
in elegant balletic stance on leather toes,
ethereal,
I feel the inquisitive stroke of your furrowed stare
and smell your body’s heady resin paint
of dotted lines in fluid daub,
immersed within euphoric spying trees,
darting lizards, strange rainbow birds.
I hear your rhythmic guttural hum.
Do I frighten you, or you me?
Perhaps it’s better to stay there, safely hidden
don’t make a trade; this is still your land
and I hear its song,
as kangaroos bound across the sky.

© Graham Sherwood Australia 2008