The Mouth

 
  From the barrages we pad the dunes    crunch underfoot cockles on ancient 
middens 
through teatree towards a distant roar. rollers dumping and foaming. 		      salt 
spray soft-focussing the scene so only the centre where you stand is sharp,  the edges
shrouded. 
A permapine line of pickets stakes a fort to keep the 4wds 		         beyond    the 
pale. 



   A world of white and shades of grey on this overcast day     Walk towards the
River Murray Mouth and see no one else in three hours, swallowed  as sandgrains in the
vastness. 
Beached sandcrabs, chalk bone of cuttlefish soaked in its own ink, kelp, oystershells
worn to blackness and flat smooth palmsized stones for skimming         all in muted
monochrome		


  Then the detritus of colour.
Shreds of polyrope in fluoro orange, blue, green. A manmade gaudiness of excess. Lids
from shampoo bottles, a rubber ball, trash from passing ships. The disposable.
Always the 		           rumbling roar 				              of wind and sea. 


   towards the Mouth, the wasteland. A string of orange pennants to mark soft edges.
 Expanse of sameness. A desert of bulldozed sand, homogenous, devoid of weed, pebbles,
 shells, ripples.			          Spinifex flashing curved needles of light in the
 wind The great black serpent of the dredge pipe                          snaking over
 the dunes


   The pipesnake shudders and heaves, throbs and pulses Press an ear to the
peristalsis 
and it whispers the word 
silk 
as black sludge passes through itself.


   At the end the snake regurgitates black bilge and spews it swirling to the southern
ocean, eroding away 								                          the last
dune
The new Mouth of the mighty Murray                                             renamed  
                                                                  Discharge Location A