MY DARLING

[Hully]

(In response to The River(Click Link))

Hi Neville,
I like the sentiment too - but good luck with the judges ! !

I live on the Darling River - here is my version...

My Darling

My Darling wends her winding way across the Western Plains
She fills the narrow channel and spills into shallow drains
And runs within the country like the blood within its veins
As life follows with her where she goes
My Darling carries far more than the water she contains
And lives beyond the realm of what she shows
For water’s not the only thing that falls in summer rains
And not the only thing that ebbs and flows

My Darling keeps the secrets of the years spent at her side
My wishes found a place within her reaches to reside
The fears I kept she gently swept, and laughter multiplied
The tears that she harbours to this day
My Darling keeps a million other’s stories deep inside
And secrets that I know she won’t betray
She holds the treasure of my dreams whenever I confide
And worries which she washes well away

My Darling struggles bravely with the changes she has faced
The pieces taken from her that can never be replaced
The memories of landscapes now centuries erased
The efforts that are made to bend her will
My Darling bides her time within the track that she has traced
With vows that she has promised to fulfil
She knows the greed of men and their capacity for waste
While changing plans are forced upon her still

My Darling shrinks within herself and bakes beneath the sun
Responding to demands and to the damage that’s been done
She sleeps beneath the sand and refuses now to run
Her mighty frame a shallow shrunken creek
My Darling waits until the ties that bind become undone
To prove she is not pitiful and meek
She sleeps until the other cycle of her life’s begun
To show that we must listen to her speak

My Darling like an army, swells and bursts across the land
And miles of open country now falls under her command
Defying opposition as her tributaries expand
She turns the shrunken wetlands into seas
My Darling carries death along with life within her hand
And occupies the flooded plains with ease
She offers up an argument that all must understand
And the strongest of will cannot appease

My Darling now withdraws and returns back to her source
She nestles in her bed without regret, without remorse
As fragile lands recover from the fury of her force
To go about the business of regrowth
My Darling does not compromise the nature of her course
Those actions are bound to her by oath
She is not a creator with a scheme she must enforce
And neither a destroyer, she is both.

My Darling has a body and a soul to which she clings
The flow of life and death are the cycles that she brings
The hopes, dreams and secrets are the stories that she sings
But her nature never was a guarantee
My Darling is the fountain from which life eternal springs
And holds the hope of what will one day be
She has a soul that courses through a million other things
And a spirit that has found a home in me.

h

[Maureen K Clifford]

Hully - them's beautiful words Mate - much enjoyed.

Cheers

Maureen

[william williams]

beuwty Hully shes my river mate in all her stroppy seasons she's a beauty Mate

bill the old battler

[Leonie]

WOW!! What an amazing poem, and what a talent.

[Neville Briggs]

Good work Mr Hull, it's interesting to see how two people can come up with entirely different expressions on a very similar theme. The Yanks found some great poetry in the Mississippi and the Missouri and the Rio Grande, why shouldn't we find plenty of poetry in the mighty Darling River.

[Hully]

Thankyou all for your kind comments - who shifted this to here???? - Manny???....thanks anyway ! !
the odd comments at the start are because this was a response to Neville's insightful piece 'The River'.....
wrote this in 2007 though.....

cha

h

[swaggyjoe]

... Nahhh, wasn't me Mate, we've got great 'on the ball' Mods .
I like your recording of this one (played Pise Walls last night) ...