The Dreamtime

1.
In the hush before sun-bringing,
heroes moved unseen –
shadows skimming riverbank,
rising where eucalypt bends
beside the silent springs.
Phantoms of first ages,
the past stirring the sand.

2.
On the bare earth,
where nothing stood but shade,
they walked – Pakadringa, Rain-bringer,
breathing stories into dawn-hazed children,
making the deep places echo
with footsteps of wisdom.

3.
These heroes are not gone –
they are memory folded into land.
Creeks and waterfalls retell
their grace and thunder,
the blackfella’s thoughts alive
with every dip and bend
of water’s ancient ways.

4.
A clap of thunder –
the Thunder-men wrestled,
Lightning arched the night.
Warnings crackled in the smoke:
the path is steep,
tread where they set feet,
keep the law and keep together.

5.
Tribes awoke from the Dreamtime,
cast from mists before birds called.
Dawn walked the ridges on gentle toes.
Out of night’s cover
heroes opened the world –
splitting darkness,
giving shape to everything.

6.
Nothing at first – only quiet,
the rise of Mother’s breath –
her spirit feathering the grass,
her form moulding the rock.
She sang the Dream-men,
flesh from void,
and they seeded all that moves.

7.
From mighty hands,
creatures tumbled singing:
fish sliding through memory,
birds arcing sky in a cradle
of possibility,
each one a coil
of Dreamtime power.

8.
But the world needed a word –
so in the growing light
the Dream-shade spoke,
and with the Word,
clans were shaped
and tribes circled around Law,
threaded by custom and care.

9.
Rainbow-Serpent painted the ground,
slithering patterns of belonging –
a path for all to follow,
colour binding body to story,
promise curling in riverbeds,
winding always home.

10.
Rainbow-Serpent laid down marriage,
fixed kin in the web,
wove rules from dawn’s own sinew –
the heroes stamped their shadows,
giving ways to keep the peace,
song and silence to craft
living together.

11.
Bullroarers cry in the dark,
a sound thick with eternity –
air vibrating with Dreamtime’s Word,
spun by hands that know,
reminding all who listen:
the cycle closes, opens, closes,
we are the song.

12.
Through night’s soft hollow,
shades drift along the sacred path –
in the hush before sunrise
they settle in the waiting womb,
totems wrapped close about
as protection and promise.

13.
From bird to fish to possum,
totem-forms cradle spirit,
each one reborn in flesh,
child to mother,
spirit singing the secret names,
holding safe the journey
between birth and dust.

14.
Weapons splinter and decay;
skin returns to earth.
Yet spirit is a boomerang –
fleeting through time,
finding new hands and voices
to speak the old dawn
as real as this morning’s sun.

15.
So we sing the heroes’ songs –
learning always that the smallest ripple
is made from the oldest stone.
Every humble thing
carries a dream’s shadow –
we walk holding
the weight and wonder
of Dreamtime.

by Bakchos