The lumpy wrinkled flesh
of some great ancient beast
a woolly mammoth
or elasmothere
lies mummified beside the Hume
near Gundagai.
She must have strayed here
so far south
on long-lost sunken land
or melted ice
and never found her way
back home.
Her body dried to rock
by endless sun and wind
spreads wide
across the plain.
Distant sheep are maggots
crawling on her lichened skin
their new-shorn fleece
the painful
almost-white of larvae
on raw meat.
She doesn’t seem
to mind.
Perhaps the warm
quiet company
of woolly beasts
however small
still comforts her
in the long
slow afterlife
of stone.