Beneath the westward Taylor Range –

The sun, as outback bulldust red;

Leaves silent, the breeze fallen dead –

The languid town sweats and waits for a change.

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Near to the houses, trim brick and wood,

Stand others, formed of stone, faced raw,

Where tenured head and tribal law

Warn to steer well clear, if you know what’s good.

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Work-tired folk sit for supper hour;

From a porch-top cuts a canine howl.

Its master shoots a full-mouthed scowl,

Unconscious of the waxing unseen power.

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Clinking plates, a stone’s throw away,

A lizard scuffles o’er a rock,

Rising with the eventide clock,

Lapping the air for tastes of food or play.

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As the purple gloom fades darker,

The moon in white effulgence grows;

How chill and fluorescent it glows

As the lizard seeks meat for his larder.

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Below a cliff as bleached bone white,

A gravid she-moth slowly crawled

Cross a granite canvas, where are scrawled

Dreamscapes drawn from a more than human sight.

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Tense as a pot of boiling meth,

The lizard – so sleek, his limbs strong,

Eyes keen and his sticking tongue long –

He had found his prey and he meant it death.

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Darkness hides a great many things,

Perchance much bigger than a moth;

With heart beating giddy and wroth,

A gaze, flared ablaze, to the lizard clings.

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The scholars cry: ‘Twill go extinct!”

But he who strikes with aim divine;

Whose bite severed the reptile’s spine,

He acted but on the purest instinct.

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The gift left on the porch’s planks;

A museum would handsome pay

For the offering which there lay;

“This kind are grown quite rare today…”

The moggie cleans his ruddy shanks;

Alas, for his largesse, he gets no thanks!