Irrigation Channel

Down by the irrigation channel Where we used to take our socks off Sliding down the muddy banks To where we couldn't see our toes She didn't say a word Her face told every gory Detail from the slimy rocks And the eels feeding down below Everything unravelled at the channel But we didn't come to swim Dress hanging from a blackberry branch While its thorny hands reach in Hungry silence at the kitchen table Piece of meat like she used to make me Run my knife through the mashed potato Making rivers with the gravy Stacking plates on the kitchen sink Scrape 'em clean in the dirty water Thoughts running to a hot dark night Down a track to where I caught her Everything unravelled at the channel But we didn't come to swim Dress hanging from a blackberry branch While its thorny hands reach in And the water wheel doesn't spin there anymore But I still recall the kicking and the slapping of it all Back paddock's like a dry dead body Walking down the irrigation channel Peering out like a digger in a foxhole Shooting into No Man's Land Found a rag on a blackberry branch Flapping in the breeze like a fish on a hook Thought of summers when the grass was greener And the irrigation flowed Everything unravelled at the channel But we didn't come to swim Dust rises like a ghost in the paddock While those thorny hands reach in And the water wheel doesn't spin there anymore But I still recall the kicking and the slapping of it all That water wheel doesn't spin there anymore But I still recall the kicking and the slapping of it all