Terra Firma

there is a flurry of footprints around our belongings, marking

arrival from shoreline to sand mound; we are high and dry and

we have the world at our feet. And guns, sextant, watercolours.

A charge in the air, like touching skins with a soon to be lover.

She is waiting and wanting; her bare shoulder, luminous—young,

unmarked. We are just the smallest of imprints. A spillage of

cargo and thirst. Our skin cracking from the dry of it, the strange

of it. A handful, a boatful. The first wave and belonging to no-one.

The colours here, so beyond the palette of our imaginings, we have

no names—for your names. Just a flurry of glaring footprints.

And our hunger.

Published First Wave: Exploring Early Coastal Contact History in Australia (Wakefield Press, 2019) edited by Gillian Dooley & Danielle Clode