6.The Town I Loved So Well: Images of Gawler SA. 'Silky Blue Grass'

Silky Blue Grass

Dichanthium sericeum

after a small woven grass basket made by a local

Kaurna Aboriginal woman before white settlement

The gardeners have been instructed

not to mow

where the Silky Blue Grass

still grows

in diminished and endangered clumps

across the parkland.

For fifty million years

you have tossed your blue green

tufted heads

with fervour

and without all this competition

from notifiable and noxious

invaders.

Waving the eons by:

until she took you in her long fingers

and gave you a fresh perspective

a new breath

a chance we all live our whole lives for

to be born again.

Jeff Guess

Once widespread across the Adelaide Plains, this last small 'protected' clump still growing near the confluence of the North and South Para Rivers.

©Jeff Guess 2017