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