Was there some thud of foot in the mist and the silence
That stiffens whisker and ear in sound's fierce absence,
Some smell means man?
I see the dewdrop trembling upon the rushes,
All else is the mist's now, river and rocks and ridges.
Poor lump of movable clay, snuffling and blinking,
Too thick in the head to know what thumps in your thinking,
Rears in the rain –
Be easy, old tree-root's companion; down there where your burrow
Dips in its yellow shadow, deep in the hollow,
We have one mother, good brother; it is Her laughter
That sends you now snorting and plunging like red flood-water
To earth again.
The poem’s final note refers back to the Australian vision of survival and the power of the natural world
Wombat