Landscape, Poetry, Ricoh RF 500
by Patrick Jennings

The Singing Land

The Mereenie Loop, Grassland, Near Gosse Bluff, Northern Territory, Australia
In this land
Of endless grass
And rolling hills
With scattered trees
And clinging brush

We roll on through
With singing tires
On bitumen
Both dreaming of
This singing land

The people here
For millenia
Still sing the land
To keep it right

A promise to
The Ancestors
Who sang the world
Into this form

What once was null
Now has life
Rolling hills
And endless grass

And two happy souls
Who hum along
With singing tires
On open road

Mereenie Loop
Near Gosse Bluff
Northern Territory, Australia

Taken during travels, 1994

The poem is in reference to the Aboriginal Dreamtime and the Songlines of the Dreamtime creation myth. The world was created from a null, void plane when the Ancestors, in the form of Kangaroo, Kookaburra, Emu, Crocodile,… etc., rose from the plane and began to sing as they walked. The notes of their song created the world beneath their feet. More about the Dreamtime in my original blog.