TERRITORIAN SET - #1.
ALICE
Alice, put on your company gown
The tourists come to visit
Set didgeris and roo hide belts
Serve lemon myrtle and bush tomato
Take them on camels to watch your red sun rising
Offer them opals, tender station beef
Under your sunny skies.
Alice, put on your working dress
You might be any country town
Uniforms and permanent press
Artists sitting in the mall
Friendly staff in shops
Receptionists, librarians -
But where are your keen-eyed stockmen?
Your doughty fossickers?
Where is Peter Finch?
Has he gone away?
Alice, put off your painted mask
And let me know your face
Alice, place of dreams, of the great red rock
Where is your private self when the tourists leave?
The sandy Todd, the ageless river gums
Peewits, pigeons, shy rosellas
The gap and the rugged hills
Alice, where are your legends, what are you now?
Copyright Sally
Odgers 2000.
This is part of the
Territory set of poems I wrote while working in Darwin and Alice Springs in
July 2000.
