Of times he'd spent, in ages past
(Or so it seemed to my young ears),
Upon this lake with grandfather
Back in those days, the shore was high,
And boats would float on deeper depths,
before the drought had caught our land
in scorching, parching, deathly grip
For now the shoreline sits below
the jutting peers in lake-side gardens
and trees, now rotted, once submersed
are visible once more above
the echo of a former lake.
A child's eye surveyed the mud,
the rotting stumps a-crawl with bugs,
the rusted iron scraps and junk.
What former beauty was her skin?
What tales untold of ancient times?
What settlers laid the first pale eyes
upon the land newly revealed?
What tribe did dwell here e'er the dam
was built to flood the opening?
What spirit guardians of life
presided here primævally?
Yet children ne'er could read the signs,
or know to question or to find
The answers hidden beneath the lake
Now fresh laid bare in whithering heat
The crippled rainfall had left its toll
On man's once proud and scarring hole
Perhaps in answer to the grief
enforced by pale and arrogant hands
For once I was a careless child,
Un-used to understand the truth
Of cause, effect, the acts of man
and how and why some things are done
But now I understand the pain.
I feel the evil that seethes within
The heart of every single man
who to the Occident is bound.
In name, it was the Taungurong
Who walked the Goulburn Valley's paths
Who spoke in tongues uncannily
Of one named Myndie -- Rainbow Serpent
Ridges, mountains, gorges formed
and waterholes, and he tended to.
Perhaps the Taungurong were wise
and knew the path to aqua-ease?
A child walked back
to his house
and spied a stump
('twas once a tree).
And set therein
the child did see
a rusted shank
thrust deep with force
had split into
the aching wood
whose timber then
had set the space
aside to let
the metal rest
and serenely skew
the wholesomeness
To leave it be, in humour wrought.
But had I stopped, to stop and think
perhaps a life might have been bought.
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