Opal Rains

The endless plains swept out in front of us

Swept me off my feet

And the sky, it was so blue

And clear

As if for the first time we could really see it

The clouds were dwarfed against the pressing azure

That came crashing down over us

Like an endless tide of cornflower blue

And I am nothing but a grain of sand along the riverbank

Happy enough to watch the floods spread over the plains

When the floods finally recede

The iridescent fish are left gasping in the mud -

A flapping tangle of gills and glass eyes

That seem to see everything and nothing,

I see opal in myself, reflected in the lifeless eyes of the fish

My pink knuckles

The purple under my own eyes

The veins etching blue across my chest

All the ugly imperfections

Crystallised in this twilight hour

I see opal in the grasses

And the native flowers that shelter the quails

Opal in the piercing eyes of the pale orange cat

Opal in the sunrise between strips of clouds like ribbon

I see a lust in the people here that can only be created by colour

And a desire for more

The red of the soil that kisses the horizon

And the endless sky

In all its shades