Dear Gugaamgan
Too long – since your plumes traced the ocean in abundance

Now, salted feathers fracture into splinters – a memory

They named us dying and waged war on us, too

             Named us unworthy of their false flag

             Or any flag

             Named us savages

             Named this place, terra nullius

             Named her, last of her tribe

             daughter of the last king, they insisted

But kings wear crowns and we wear kinship

             not to mention, we smuggled survival in our blood

             sixty thousand years nestled underneath our tongues

Our bones hold memories of your shadow

             a feathered prophecy stitched into an autumn sky

             we still remember seasons charted in the shape of you

But you are not an exhibit

             nor in a museum

             are the living rendition of a constellation

             a fleshed and embodied memory

             a hero within a long-ago story

This is our duty

             to gather up adornments you leave behind

             to wear a revolution you carried in your wings

             to protect your nesting grounds against highways

             and forgetting

When we fly again, they will say your name

and hold you in reverence – Gugaamgan



 Gugaamgan, is the Gumbaynggirr word for ‘emu’. ↩