Here you will find thePoemDroughtof poet Flexmore Hudson
Midsummer noon: and the timbered walls start in the heat; and the children sag listlessly over the desks, with bloodless faces oozing sweat sipped by the stinging flies. Outside, the tall sun fades the shabby mallee and drives the ants deep underground; the stony driftsand shrivels the drab, sparse plants; there's not a cloud in all the sky to cast a shadow on the tremulous plain. Stirless the windmills; thirsty cattle, standing despondently about the empty tanks; stamping and tossing their heads, in torment of the flies from dawn to dark. For ten parched days it has been like this and, although I love the desert I have found myself dreaming of upright gums by a mountain creek where the red borinia blooms, where bellbirds chime through the morning mists, and greeness can hide from the sun; of rock-holes where the brumbies slink like swift cloud-shadows from the gidgee scrub to drink when the moon is low. And as I stoop to drink, I too, just as I raise my cupped hands to my lips, I am recalled the drought-stricken plain but the petulant question of a summer - wearied child.
