This week's assignment is to write descriptively, with all the senses, about place.
She slips from the
house as the family dozes, the afternoon sweltering. Her playground is a washed
out place of greens and dappled greys. Tall gums, she-oaks and a huge Christmas
bush of deepest olive, no longer speckled red, compose her ceiling and her walls.
Bark crunches under bare feet as she climbs sandy solid rocks to play, to jump,
and to dream. Her mother’s voice, a memory, echoes, “where are your shoes?” Spinning
around in the dappled light she spots the green-tinged cream of flannel flowers.
She picks one and slips its velvet behind her ear. Rustles in the undergrowth
as her passing shadow alarms the under dwellers. A loud whip and scrabble
announces a cold-eyed goanna who scales an angled trunk and watches warily. Far
off bell-chimes of crimson rosellas break through the pulsing quiet. A complexity
of bush smells comforts as her imagination drifts.
“Lion Rock” she says,
“ yes you are my Lion”. Soft feet seek toe grips and she climbs lithely to
perch atop. She reaches her small arms around his scratchy lichened neck. Resting
her cheek to his cool mane, the bush heat throbs around her.
