Kaltukatjara.
The name forms on my tongue.
The houses sprawl in the sun
like camp dogs,
curled up at the foot of the hills.
Beneath them
the land lies still,
untouched by their presence.
Are the souls of the people so?
Stranger here,
I cannot know.
I came just yesterday,
following your stories and
the wandering of my heart
down the long track
south from Kintore.
The track wandered too,
a fine brown thread
amongst the dunes,
tangled, yet
weaving a pattern still,
sewing sand hill and spinifex
ever more tightly
into the tattered fabric
of my life.
I looked hard but
found no message in the sand
and, at last,
both driver and driven,
I arrived at this place.
Now the face of the hill
is turned towards me.
The sun slips away
at my back and,
after all of this,
all that I can see
is your absence.
And I realise that
the hills of Kaltukatjara
became a part of me
long before I saw them,
and though those hills
surround me now
they are not what I see,
for what I see now
is what I saw from the start -
the wind carved mountains
of my heart.
Kaltukatjara.