5 Minutes On Country

Dedicated to Aboriginal Elders past, present and emerging, and particularly those of the Dharug peoples in the Eora Nation whose Country was stolen early on and who continue to be persecuted by the colonial state called New South Wales in the stolen country so-called Australia

According to Elders
I have a sacred duty
to Bankstown.

It’s where I entered the world.
It’s my Country,
so it’s my role

to care for this place. It took 50 years but
finally, between someplace important and someplace urgent,
I found 5 minutes for Country.

Bankstown Hospital, my birthplace—
Birthplace of a Nation—
forget Kurnell.

At one point
if I surveyed everyone I knew,
more than half would be born at Bankstown.

Half a century later,
I find this stolen Dharug Country
is a locked box.

She’s entombed under thick concrete, roots buried deep,
her remnant trees fenced
behind galvanised diamonds and No Entry signs.

This Country is stylised into zen gardens
and traffic islands;
she pokes out in ruderals through asphalt.

In the 5 minutes left
on my free parking, how
shall I care for this, my Country, Dharug Country?

I offer her a few drops of water,
a moment of stillness.
I offer bare soles

on the patches of earth I can access.
My palm on a tree trunk.
I rustle the exotic shrubbery,

listen to a cricket, stare down a magpie.
I document the Stolen Country’s prison.
Count the paddy wagons lined up