Menesetung

The Sign said “Laughing Water” and I stopped to listen…

Indeed there was a chattering far down below the bridge

Where the water danced its way along the rocky bottom,

Babbling this and prattling that, it bounced a path of life.

It’s at the Piper’s Dam they say there is a deep, Black Hole…

“Bottomless” says the legend, unknown, immeasurable.

Just think, a fathomless crater-like cavity filled with inky

Water, sightless molecules smothered in blind irrigation.

The Maitland water is pretty and calm where the dam used to be…

Once there was a busy mill and people bustled, came and went,

Work continuing in normalcy while a deep, dark  cavernous hole

Sat hidden beneath the water, like a limp secret sitting in solitude.

Now a slab of flat stone sits reminding us of where the mill once stood

And weeds, tall grass, erosion work at obliterating even those remains

But the memories lurk and you can almost see the men in trousers, boots

Buzzing like bees, resembling Mennonites, knowing how to get it done.

On a back road on the way home to where I live, there is a house…

Tiny, tumbling into disarray, sad in countenance and  lopsided.

Its windows are piled high with mumble jumble, relics, refuse,

Clutter crammed into cracks and holes, a carnival of rubbish.

I muse about the way our lives are like the aging of old buildings

Like the tumble-down shanty, no longer able to stand without leaning

Or like the river, where buried in its unreachable depths there

Is a spot of darkness where no light can enter and mystery remains.

cailin raine