White Riders of The Crocodile

WHITE RIDERS OF THE CROCODILE

She wanted
no more white riders
of the crocodile
and she saw
that her granddaughters
at the CMS Mission School
would hopefully never know
the fearful times as she'd had
in times of the white riders
at the Roper River,

she a small girl
when a man on a horse
was the monster,
a thing animal of a man,
fused as if misbegotten
from a womb of earth
come to the Roper then
where life was
falling down to the water
like meat
taken for far worse
and she'd been hid
like a shame under the leafy vines
from any sight
of the white riders

for a first sight that
would be the last
of the white riders
saved from going
after her older sister and brothers
whose little lives ran out
chased by white riders
in a big crocodile of horses
till their young brains
had been knocked out
against the rocks

and their victim
bodies taken
to the pandanas-edged
billabong where
the crocodiles were
crocodiles she heard
had ever since
thought of as callers of
aiders and abbetters
of the terror
disposers of the bodies
left them
by the white riders

Old Gajiyuma knew
of one little boy
grandson of his brother-in-law.
who had been similarly sunk
in hungry waters as
a victim body
after he had been flogged
to death for running
away from the angry hooves,
the unintelligible shouting mouths
of the white riders of the crocodiles.

The White Riders who
came as tall mounted servants
of the older deeper crocodiles
so fearfilled
that they rode out
armed to the teeth
in the gun-toting heat
with their sharp sun-heated knives
wielding them.

White Riders who came
on a Sunday,
like a ceremony,
or on other day the crocodiles
were hungry

White Riders
like crocodiles running
with watching eyes and snorting
snouts of anger
as if they might just
be going to shoot
everyone down dead

to kill them all
like fish in dried up water
kill and take them
take the bodies down
to where they sunk under
what could be seen
where the the White Riders
took them to the crocodiles
so they all swam away
into the white
of the crocodile's eye
whence White Riders come.