El Niño in the austral alien antipodes.
So far from here, and yet — like a moth to flame, that alien world of drought and indifference. Where days are so bleached by light, they're burnt in my eyes at night:
An abrasive scrubland of parching wind and ultraviolet radiation; A tinderbox of accelerant and the fear of phantom smoke; Where fire sired eucalypts, wilt in midday sun; And browning leaves are falling but Autumn is not calling.
Out there is the Eastern Brown, and the red-stripe snake and spider; Out there meat ants strip carcass to bone and six-foot rats are bipedal; Out there swarms of fly plague the shade and cicadas sound like warning siren.
Out there. Out there. Out there, where people do not dare, there is peace. And so like vampire I hide in lair, until stars we can stare. Such is this summer for sinners. Beware. Beware. Beware.