The Land is a Quilt of Falling

The land is a quilt of falling dry pages, an earthen palette:

the inlaid chequerboard of its browned patchwork tapestry

is a Victorian quilt that passes under the sky in so many

inventions of brown: the russet tan, woodgrain and ochre;

the fired red, jaded orange, dusky sand and olive stone.

This earth is a floored mansion: a parquetry of inlaid wood.

This earth is a confetti marriage-scatter of autumn's pages.

And my continent-avowng plane-flight gives angel's vision

of a sky, an arc of the world, a land, a people needing change;

change in habit more than weather, thirst for a new season

where the quiltwork of human hands works the redeems

across warming beauty in sleep that wakes on another side.

Copywright. Wayne David Knoll, Jan 2007 Alice Springs,

(after a direct flight from Melbourne} 23 Jan 2007)