The Living and the Dead

On a parched outback plain, there is a winding course. Red gums line the banks of a once water source. But sand is creeping quickly, through drought and failing rain, so the flora must adapt, on a parched outback plain. The black box struggles on; desert pea seed needs rain. Quandong wants the wattle to fight through the dry again, but when it gets too parched, life finds the boiling sun, can be a bridge too far, so many do succumb. The living and the dead keep standing side by side. One is dressed in green; one gray with life denied. One shade for a traveler; one hollowed out instead; and accompany one another - The living and the dead. On the floodplain of an anabranch where the soil is dry and dust. The salt bush remains prolific where beneath them is a crust. Parts of nitre bush are dying, but the rest keeps struggling on. There’s skeletons of invadors; sun seered now dead and gone. Skeletons line the shrinking water of carp that are deceased, and carcasses of kangaroos from starvation has increased. A feast for roaming goannas, who scavange on the dead, beside ravens and the eagles, until the living are well fed. The living leave the dead in their struggle to survive as they search for greener pasture once the rain does finally arrive. The cycle starts it’s journey that’s been hanging by a thread, and new life that’s in the ouback to keep living needs the dead.