Todd River Crossing - (An Alice Springs Dreaming)

TODD RIVER CROSSING: (Lheere Mparntwe) -An Alice Springs Dreaming - a song lyric

We sleep awfully, tossed and turned, to dreams in bedrooms of stars
Impatient nights of waiting, in frost measured in digits of bare toes;
Derelict, beached in the sand camps, down in this air of freedom,
Passing over soon as the slips of sandal prick down on the goads.

Goads of God? In mountains of this Promised Land?
Goads of Bindyeyes: "Keep off the thorn-crowned hills!"
Goads in poker-burns, crackling velum soles in hot-whip sand
A broken glass and angry bottle-thirst, unslaked in the vinegar.

Despaired. Heavitree Gap is a guzzle mouth with red-rock teeth,
Spike and boulder gnash together again on a MacDonell-one Calvary;
So down; make a bed in sand to bowl our hip in little heaven, except
The damn rock pillows of Jacob unrest battling angels off mountain stairs.

Archangel caterpillars crawl us over to cross the river,
The slow-train of their creeping puts legs down in our skins;
O, we gotta get over Jordan, hope is on the other side,
To light the fire of the spirit for when the sun has gone.

We once saw the land of promise; green budgies fly free to fill the trees
And the redgums drop their manna by rare mudlark pools of rain;
Wild grain is ripe for gleaning, the Immense One is coming down,
A wash of dust will fall from us as we baptised beyond the pain.

Todd River is our Jordan, the floods of another dreaming flow,
The current of the holy river will stand us up against a wall;
There is something crossing over to where the angels go,
With the ones who can't fight the love of Jesus from their souls.