At twelve, I wanted to be a paleontologist

digging up bones in the paddocks round here,

easing a scythe of jaw from the creek bank –

not Diprotodon, but horse. Still,

I remember the thrill carrying it home

through that raw suburb, layered now in my mind.
Those strange creatures that evolved there:

Mr F. tuning his finicky engines,

Mrs H. axing the heads off chooks

their beaks still gaping on the bloody stump,

Mr B., a grey floppy hat among bean rows,

Mrs P. parading in her negligee

and beating her son with a hose.
In bed at night I pegged ancient shallow seas,

looking for life stamped in stone,

the dream coins of fossil joy.

And now there’s not enough time,

I want another go – 
Digging under this new estate,

a chaconne of grey mortgages,

I would excavate the swamp that was here:

a gift of water where blue cranes

teetered into their westering

and the moon behind them rose from the weeds.
I would sort and classify those sounds:

the dour claxon of the crane,

the crickets and frogs still calling

from the storm drain.
Shall I dig further?

Past the middens of the Kaurna,

proving their earlier claim,

exposing old theft and murder.
Where is my heartland?

What if I dug clear through the earth,

emerging in Skara Brae,

that Orcadian flint in my family?

What if I climbed from the harbour at Kirkwall,

entered that shop with the soundless bell,

stood at the bench where great-grandfather Flett

finesses ships’ chronometers and doesn’t look up?

His clock faces stilled to stone.
Would these people want me back?

Should one lie down with ancestor bone?