The Ballad of the Ghost Gum Elder

I am the ghost of the ghost gum tree, with limbs like silver bones,
Rooted deep in red cracked earth where time has lost its tones.
For eight long centuries I’ve stood through fire, flood, and drought,
And now I hum a warning song the young don’t talk about.

My bark once gleamed in moonlight’s kiss, my leaves sang with the breeze,
And ‘roos would doze in dancing shade beneath my canopies.
The currawong and cockatoo would warble from my crown,
Now birds fly west or not at all, the silence weighs me down.

I’ve seen the Dreaming walk these lands, in patterns scorched and sung,
The footfalls of the old ones here when Earth and sky were young.
The Rainbow Serpent carved the streams, the sea was full of breath,
But now the salt comes creeping in, and reefs grow white with death.

The spinifex would shimmer gold beneath a noon so wide,
The dingo pack would prowl and yelp along the coastal tide.
Storms would come with rhythm once, a cycle well-designed,
But now they rage or vanish fast, as if the world’s gone blind.

The flame trees flower too early now, the river gums decay,
The waterholes I’ve whispered to dry up and drift away.
The frogs no longer call at dusk, the night feels far too still,
And fire has changed its ancient song, it only comes to kill.

I’ve seen the smoke of sacred fires and miners’ diesel gears,
I’ve heard the cries of country folk through colonising years.
Yet never have I trembled so from roots to brittle limb
As now, when Earth’s own fever grows, and every breath feels thin.

The skies once wore a bluer shade; the clouds had sweeter rain,
And breezes bore the scent of life through every lowland plain.
But now the sky turns strange with heat, the stars blink through a haze,
The seasons slip like loosened beads from Time’s unravelled blaze.

My children, hear the trees that speak, the emu’s vanishing tread,
The fish that once would leap in floods now float, half-scaled, half-dead.
The sun bites harder than it did when I was just a sprout,
And winter’s whisper fades away, replaced by parching doubt.

I watched the mobs in corroboree, feet stamping song to sky,
Their chants would stir the soil beneath, their spirits riding high.
Now plastic wraps the river stones, the cane toads clog the creek,
The old law silenced by the noise of engines when they speak.

And yet, a flicker in the dark, a youth who hears my moan,
A girl who plants with reverence, who tends each seed she sows.
A boy who walks with careful steps, who listens to the land,
Who knows the fire-stick wisdom held in grandpa’s calloused hand.

I’ve stood through loss and regrowth too, through lightning’s wrath and birth,
But never was the turning point so dire upon this Earth.
Not fire alone, nor drought, nor flood, but all these things as one,
A chain unlinked, a map unmade, a setting of the sun.

The elders born with skin and scars now sit beneath my shade,
Their stories thick with warnings too, their hands like mine decayed.
We watch the trucks roll further in, the fracking pipes descend,
And wonder what will hold this land when even roots can’t bend.

I dream of days when bush would bloom, when goannas clung to bark,
When wallabies would court the dusk and night would hum with dark.
Now moonlight spills on clearing sites and drills that never sleep,
And I, a tree with centuries’ sight, can only sway and weep.

So if you walk with barefoot grace and feel the soil ply,
If you can hear the willy wagtail’s final lullaby,
Then maybe there’s a breath to spare, a path not paved in coal,
A way to mend the aching land, to make the broken whole.

Plant trees, my child, and listen well to how the koel cries,
Revive the lore, respect the law, and read the shifting skies.
The land will speak, but soft and slow, not loud like booming trade,
You’ll find the truth in termite trails, in leaf-fall, duff, and shade.

Here I, the ghost of ghost gum blood, still stand though time is thin,
My rings hold songs you’ve never sung, and truths etched deep within.
I offer shade and story still, though few may raise their eyes,
But know: the earth remembers all, and old ones never die.

May voices rise like magpie calls in dawn’s first fevered light,
Like themeda, let action spread across the plains of blight.
For country lives if country’s loved, and kinship we must weave,
Or else I’ll be the last to fall, the final ghost to grieve.

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