By lands where river-reeds grow en mass and egrets wheel in flight,
The wetlands dream beneath the sun and stir beneath the night.
Not idle swamps, but living veins that pulse through field and fen,
They guard the world with silent strength, far more than minds of men.
A hush of frogs at the fall of dusk, a croak, a splash, a cry,
A heron still as sculpted bone against a saffron sky.
These mirror-lands of silver breath are more than just a view,
They hold the songlines of the land, the ancient sacred cues.
Where callistemons crowd the banks and pobblebonks alight,
The wetland wears its emerald cloak and guards with subtle might.
It holds the flood, it cleans the stream, it makes the waters stay,
And when the drought begins to burn, it gives its soul away.
It is the sponge that soaks the storm, the shield against the flame,
It is the breath the outback draws though never speaks its name.
It is the mother of the mangrove, cradle of the cray,
It whirrs and drones with damselflies and bears the tide’s ballet.
The platypus and bittern low, the snake-neck bird in glide,
The bandicoot who builds a nest where sedge and bulrush hide,
They owe their breath, their place, their path to wetlands deep and wide,
Though still we drain, and fill, and pave, and toss their bones aside.
Please listen now, you council men, you miners, makers, kings,
You dam the flood and lay the pipe but miss the song it sings.
Each cattail lost, each pond erased, each lotus crushed in vain,
Becomes a stitch undone in cloth we’ll never weave again.
We name them ‘waste’, these fertile lands, these temples thick with dew,
As if their worth is not the life they give to me and you.
Still every reed that roots below and every algae bloom,
Is cleansing poison from the stream and fending off our doom.
And when the rain runs dark with sludge, when rivers choke on foam,
The wetlands rise, a final stand, to bring the waters home.
They filter filth from farm and field, they cool the furnace sun,
They do the work of empires, yet their payment is but none.
And still the dozers dig with hungers wide and crude,
To carve the heart from marsh and bay in greed’s unyielding feud.
They do not see the hidden world below the paperbark,
Where microcosms teem with life and lungs breathe in the dark.
A thousand creatures call this home, from rush to mottled teal,
Each one a thread within a web we barely know is real.
The glossy ibis, low in flight, the azure kingfisher,
Depend upon the pools and swamps that man would soon defer.
And shall we lose this rich palette for car parks paved and bare?
Shall red gums fall to cranes and drills and leave the shoreline spare?
No, not yet, not while we stand with voices strong and loud,
To guard the guards of land and sea with heads and hearts unbowed.
The guardians guard us in turn, we owe a sacred debt.
They calm the storm, they feed the root, they hold the rising threat.
The saltmarsh holds the ancient bone, the ghost of tribe and flame,
And we are keepers now, in turn, to honour every name.
From northern range to southern shore, from floodplains wide and slow,
To lowlands veiled in silver dusk, where southern breezes blow,
The wetlands sing in tongues of green, in rakali and crake,
In reeds that whisper rainfall back through morning’s breathless wake.
And shall we teach our children this, that wetlands are a friend?
That what we save today must be the life that they defend?
That sacred land is not just dry, nor is it dust and rock,
But thrives within the swampy field and sings where lilies flock?
Let policy be penned with care, let hands restore the chain,
Let science meet with ancient lore upon this sodden plain.
For Aboriginal eyes have seen what we forgot to feel,
The power of the wetlands vast, their dreaming deep and real.
Their spirits do not walk alone, they dance in mirrored tide,
They sit within the still lagoon, with ancestors beside.
And if we dare to drain that soul for progress cold and brief,
We sell not just a land, but love, and story, and belief.
Then let us tread where soft mud clings and listen for the drum,
Of frogs that bark and whistlers call when twilight shadows come.
Let every wetland be revered, defended, named, and known,
For they are guardians still of earth, and not of them alone.
They are the lungs we did not see, the hand we did not hold,
The memory of waters pure before the mines took gold.
They are the wombs of feathered kin, the shield when rivers fail,
And still they wait, with patient grace, beyond the pick and rail.
Pray come, dear heart, and stand for them, these lands both drowned and dry,
Where whirligigs stitch mirrored seams across the open sky.
No child should one day say of us: they watched the wetlands die,
But rather, “Here the guardians lived, and still, they will not lie.”
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Wonderful, Roger.