Creative writing
My river, my love
The First People say that when the sacred snake
got stuck between the gully rocks
she whipped and writhed. Her death-struggle
made the riverbed.
She called upon the rain to set her free
and the river Maiwar rose up.
Maiwar – tides of my heart, my love –
I cry out to the river above you,
clouds tumescent and sighing and vast.
I plead with the river beneath you,
pure black pools in the earth’s fierce heart.
Maiwar.
Flood time in silence you boil and surge
to inundate the land.
To snap the city’s bones
to swallow streets and homes.
You rip us apart to nourish the dirt – or so you say,
as you drag our entrails to the sea.
So we blast and we dredge and we dam you.
So we cut you with bluestone walls.
Your waters are heavy and dulled with your wounds
and you flow on.
My great wounded river
flows on.
You, the roiling estuary of my heart, blood of my veins,
you smell of tidal mangrove, still. You taste of salt.
Your skin is the scales of the ancient snake which ripple and flash and
you are the CityCat drone,
water lapping through my soul,
blue crane cry.
Maiwar
my river my hope
my terrifying god
my beginning my end:
don’t be afraid of life, you say, for I am with you.
Pamela Douglas, Brisbane, 2022. The photo below is of the hall where Renee and I held Shared Medical Appointments with mothers and babies, as water rose during that year's floods.
