Because I took a spear
stuck in the ground
beside its owner's grave
thinking to use it
as a crutch to lean on
being by then
almost too weak to stand
they thought I was
the spirit of the dead man
being white and thus
clearly a ghost
who'd come back
to the world of flesh and blood
they welcomed me into
the the family
of the deceased

They were the Wathaurong
hunters and fishermen
who roasted fat
witchetty grubs
grilled wombat meat
they saved my life
from them
I learned the secrets
of the land
its songs and stories
how to glean its riches
thirty-two years
the best years of my life
I shared their world
but in the end I had
to make a choice
and I went back
to join the English
who had transported me
for a petty crime
I never did commit
I knew the life
I had been living
with my Wathaurong
brothers and sisters
was coming to an end
as ships and colonists
kept on arriving
and the diseases
that came with them
were killing off the ones
the whites called aborigines
savages they thought them
though I knew better
I could say but little
since despite my pardon
I was never free
of mistrust and suspician
having lived so long
a life of savagery