Yirra

Kathryn Fry

Like a mouth in the iron-ore earth

the rock-shelter whispers 

through fragments of bone, through charcoal 

and tools of stone. 

Not far from Paraburdoo, a desert town

or the mining contours of Mt Whaleback.

Through the last glacial age, through dry heat

through fifty thousand years

voices whisper. 

KATHRYN FRY has poems in Antipodes, Cordite Poetry Review, Westerly, Verandah, Science Write Now, Griffith Review, Plumwood Mountain Journal, the ACU Prize for Poetry Anthology and The Liquid Amber Anthology. Her second book The Earth Will Outshine Us was published by Ginninderra Press (2021). She lives in Belmont NSW.