There’s a riverbed of sand
With wind-blown rippled waves
And it cuts across the land
Like a Western Stream behaves
As it flows out to a lake
Lying bare beneath the sun
And the dusty shellfish bake
Where the waters used to run
There’s a lake beside the road
With a bed of open cracks
Where the search for water showed
Just a trail of dusty tracks
Where the bones that spike the floor
Show the damage that’s been done
And the rain will not restore
Where the waters used to run
And there’s a mother there with a child
and a thousand other mouths to feed
with a waterhole defiled
where the edges just recede
and there’s a father there with a heart
that lies broken at its core
because where the waters once used to start
– they don’t run there anymore
There’s dry rivers in the west
Parched billabongs and creeks
There are waterholes unblessed
By cloud that never speaks
And a hundred hot Decembers
Have now settled in the sun
In a land that scarce remembers
Where the waters used to run.
