Howlong is the Murray

Wide and slow, the Murray ambles past our open door. Cockies screech in the red gums above and right outside, one such gum tells a thousand twisting tales, squiggling limbs turning back on themselves, then choosing the light, over and over and over. A trauma tale. Two steps forward and one in reverse. Sideways now, then tearing off it’s own skin to grow normal again.

Soft, like a jazz drummer with their brushes. And silent, playing behind studio-glass, keeping rhythm for the the band beneath the river’s soundless surface.

This water moves but it must not speak. It carries the mountains’ secrets through a muddy burrow all the way to a party in the Southern Ocean. There, a million rivers mingle in a salty stew. A billion river banks melted. There, where all the secrets of all the rivers, from all the mountains coalesce, nobody but sailors know the weight the truth.