The Gold And The Rainbow Serpent Poem by Paul Warren

All stories have a beginning, body and an end
This story was a journey that I would have to defend
We left home the last day in the hot glowering sun
We drove to the end of the bitumen as the journey had begun

In the Outback there can be long dusty miles to travel
As we drove the mystery of the journey started to unravel
Charlie Dinner-plate was one of our crew mates too
Who knew the land as one of the Arrernte people true

Onward with permission to Oak Valley north of Ceduna town
We sat in the dirt with the elders asking what would go down
They agreed for us to look on their land on the area of the map
It was the first hurdle in our search for the fabled gold track

But Charlie warned us there was one place we couldn't go
For The Dreaming legend of the Rainbow Serpent on show
So we journey through the area and explored the sites we found
And the task was difficult in the scorching baked rocky ground

Until there could be only one place left for us on the sacred soil
But Charlie told us it would mean certain death in our toil
There was a long discussion until he left us there on the track
And as he drove away I saw him looking one last time back

I wish now I had heeded Charlie's warning call
Leaving that place forever and not taken my final fall
It took us five days to find the gold in the rolling hills
As we staked our claim with so much gold it spills

But around the last corner we saw the elders standing there
In total silence they were just looking at us in a total stare
I stopped the car then the chanting started through the air
When the one in the middle pointed a bone at us with such care

Now that was barely a month ago and I have lost it all
My partners are dead from strange happenings in their fall
And the gold has disappeared as my fatalistic call has begun
As I sit in this cabin waiting for what to me will finally come.

© Paul Warren Poetry