INSTREAM CONVERGENCE

It was such an unexpected magical event with the predicted rain moving around us and the Cockatoos squawking.

On the 15th August I spent a beautiful late afternoon reading poetry on the banks of the Hunter River in Maitland. 

The event Instream Convergence was hosted by MRAG with Jo Lynch, ecologist Mick Roderick and MCC Sustainability Team.  It featured artists Nicole Chaffey, Michele Heibel and poets Ray Reizor Cox and Jeanette Hunter.

This poem was inspired by the flooding on the Macleay River when I was a child

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The Flood

There’s been a lot of rain of late……. too much rain

The ground is full like the udders of the cows that graze on the flood plain.

The water will find its way, and the river will rise.

Our village is on a teardrop of land it becomes an island when the river weeps.

Dad’s lived here all his life

He’s gone up river this morning to check the levels.     

When he starts telling people to prepare…. they listen.

Mum’s racing in to town to fill the cupboard and the freezer

Bread,  powdered milk, mince,  tinned this and that

Enough to last a week

Anything ready in the vege patch is picked.

The chooks are moved into a temporary pen on the verandah

The washing machine  is up on bricks

We have an outdoor dunny ……..but let’s not talk about that!

Cars are moved up onto the bridge,

it’ll be a bridge to nowhere when the river rages 

There’s been so many changes made to the land of late – new roads, more housing

No one’s sure how the water will move this time,

Will this be like the  49’

Houses swept off their foundations like paper boats…. Lives lost…devastation

The water will find its way

The banks will break

But will we.