UP THE CREEK

UP THE CREEK.

The Manzil Room to Springfield’s era was my most productive time as a composer and sound recordist, in spite of all the other naughty stuff I used to get up to.  With the help of the musos and studio engineers I connected with I was able to externalize the tunes that were buzzing around in my head and bring them from basic acoustic versions to finely arranged and recorded productions.  As it turned out one of my music industry customers was the top sound guy at EMI studios and he had an accumulation of unpaid cocaine and marijuana debts that were owed to me.  His bill was scrubbed in exchange for some studio time and for two fantastic weeks I had the use of the EMI facility complete with free Ampex tapes and a sound engineer who really knew his stuff.  During the off time periods, late in the night we toiled over the finer details of each track until the last of my songs was brought to completion.  There was no meter running on the clock so it became an all night, track laying party based around the pool room bar.  As well as the players I had recruited there were also those from other bands who were recording their albums just up the hallway.  All it would take was a line of coke or a joint and I could take my pick of the best artists in town.  Don Walker from Cold Chisel was recording there at the time and so was Peter Blakely.  The pinnacle of my EMI sessions was a recording that we did with the singer Jeff Duff.  As you may recall he was the first nightclub performer I had ever seen back in Adelaide.  Having him come along to work on my songs was the ultimate conformation that I had transcended the role of the welfare dependent, hit and run victim and I was making some real headway in the music game.  Jeff wasn’t into dope of any description and he agreed to sing the vocal tracks purely on the strength of my material.  That was a compliment I will never forget from one we should all hold in high regard.  The most important song that Jeff and I ever recorded was a symphonic ballad, constructed of lyrics dedicated to Beth E. who was to become a regular feature during the nightclub era and eventually the mother of my first born daughter.  We stayed together for more than ten years but our romantic, free wheeling adventures came to an abrupt end when we found out she was pregnant.  Virtually overnight Beth turned from a carefree party girl into a dutiful young mother and my rock and roll lifestyle was to become the constant focus of her scorn.  It’s as if her pre-parental antics were just a glittering and seductive charade that ended once my seed was in her womb.  The role of the domestically sedated family man is plagued by unreal expectations which can bring more stress than the so called 'good life' is worth.  I had too much living to do before it was time to settle down and grow old and besides a shot at the charts was high on the cards for my swag of home spun songs.  After my attempts at fatherhood ended in a tragic and horrible mess the happy go lucky mood of my songwriting changed.  I composed a new batch of ballads and soulful laments which were close to the bone and relevant to actual heartfelt emotions.  The blues like never before became my strongest writing influence and I knocked out one anthem to lost love after another.  Around that time I became accociated with some of the better known blues players like Tommy Emmanual, Phil Manning and Kevin Borich, which brought my vocal expression to more mature, love scarred heights. 

When Beth and I left the maternity ward with our baby daughter Miranda we moved into the spare room of her family home at Glenhaven North of Sydney.  Beth’s father was a Judge in the New South Wales legal system and her mother was an educator at the Catholic school just up the road in Dural.  From the moment I set foot in the door I was made to feel that my creativity was a pointless waste of time and I should adopt a normal vocation to support my new family.  It even got to the point where one day Beth’s mother said, “Steven, ... All of this, ... ‘Save the Planet’ stuff is commendable but you can’t ever expect to make any money out of it”.  Jesus how is anyone ever going to make a difference in the world with that sort of capitalistic negativity at every turn.  In the end I just gave up on any form of philosophical or social debate with her folks and counted the moments until I had sold enough dope to leave.  Beth, myself and the bubs eventually got a place in Stanmore and I set up a live in studio in the back lane shed.  I worked on my music tirelessly and brought in some great freelance players to record the songs that I didn’t as yet have on tape.  Beth used to love my busking shows but she displayed little faith I could come up with a hit.  After a while she started to make snide little suggestions that I should get a proper job and she sounded just like her old lady. After the constant nagging started we became volatile strangers living under the same roof and our newborn baby daughter was caught in the unending crossfire of passion and contempt.  I eventually packed my bags and moved out with a broken heart and a newfound disillusion for the promise of eternal love.

Kevin Borich used to invite me on stage at the old Manzil and out of those informal jam sessions came a musical collaboration which has lasted through the years.  As well as touring with his own band ‘The Kevin Borich Express’ Kev used to do gigs with Jimmy Barnes, the late Mark Hunter and the incomparable Renee Geyer.  He had a twelve track studio in his back yard at Bondi and between touring commitments we used to work on my stuff.  Kevin particularly liked my rocky environmental numbers and he grooved to the idea that he was applying his musical skills to a worthwhile cause.  We recorded a complete album sized soundtrack for ‘Once upon a Planet’ which elevated my eco-musical from being just another tin pot hippy cabaret to a more slick and mainstream friendly production.  A host of brilliant singers were brought in to convey the unfolding story the likes of Tony Alaylis, Doug Williams and Bridget O’donehue.  As well as the soundtrack for the musical Kev and I co-composed and recorded enough material for two other albums.  They consist of foot stomping boogie shuffles, down home flavored folk ditties and deep emotional blues serenades, in a slightly minor key.  
  

                                                                                                         Kevs birthday party.

With recorded material now in hand, big league recording company executives became my prime target in the clubs and smoky bars.  Cocaine was the currency through which I bought precious moments of their leisure time as I chopped out free lines and got in their ears about what I was up to musically.  It would seem those rage happy industry reps love you to pieces when they’re off the dial, but by the next morning they can’t even remember your name.  Always hussling for a break really started to get me down because it made me feel like a cheese sniffing sewer rat who was lost in a smoky, stage lit maze.  The same old assembly of small talking night owls were perched around the same old bars and nothing seemed new anymore. After months of trying to hunt up a deal and getting few results I started to wonder if my club hopping nightshift was even worth the effort.  My involvement with cocaine had superseded all of the other drugs on the menu until such time as I couldn’t even wipe my arse in the morning without another snort.  My nightly busking activities were now few and far between because scoring the next line of demons dust was all I wanted to do.  The sidewalks and bars of Kings cross can be a great place to make a musical start if you’ve got the youthful drive to sustain it, but you have to get out when your time is done, because the miracle mile is most definitely a dead end street.  It was time for a big change of location and lifestyle because my passion for life had subsided into an abyss of uninspired lethargy and none of my expensive habits gave relief to the pain and burning regrets of losing my family.

The night that I stepped off the Sydney drug dealing, treadmill I was trying to hail a cab while dry reaching into the gutter outside of Benny’s Nightclub.  I hadn’t eaten a proper meal for days and my head was revolving in a sickening re-emergence of the teenage head spins.  I managed to get a taxi back to a fellow dealers house and crashed out on his couch ill and exhausted for three days.  After a week of climbing the wall I decided the only way to kick my coke dependence was to quit the Sydney scene.  A break in the Northern rivers seemed like the most practical option so I grabbed my hanging wardrobe and jumped on the first coach bound for Byron Bay.  Morty and some of my other long time busking companions were based in Nimbin at the time but I didn’t want to stay there because I knew too many of the local powder heads.  The Byron crowd were less familiar to me and I figured I had a better chance of staying away from the spirit crushing clutches of another cocaine rut.  I scored a studio apartment shortly after I arrived in Byron Bay which was incorporated into a large community art complex known as 'The Epicentre'.  It was filled to the rafters with world class talent and the collective focus was on creative productivity more than anything else.  In the company of so many free roaming intellectuals and artisans my mind began to clear of all the big city nonsense I had been involved with and I felt myself becoming a more sane individual with each new day.  The post cocaine heeby jeebies and debilitating cramps seemed to become less frequent  and before I knew it I was clean as a whistle, tanned and getting athletic by the sea.  My normal attire of big city stage wear was discarded in the sub tropical heat and I got back into a more beach bum style of threads.  I started growing little dreadlocks so I would look like all of the other jumping gnomes and I lived for the next sensory explosion in the land of the rainbows. My tribal home.  The cafe scene in Byron is where the artistic community and naevi political activists congregate to sup on expensive coffee and conspire to save the world.  The new age of free thought and enlightenment is in full swing among the well to do bistro set and as well as keeping a mans mind sharp it can serve as a fruitful environment to attract financial support. 

Back then I was driven by the notion that some wealthy ‘New Age Philanthropist’ was going to be taken by my eco-crusade and help me to attain the unreachable star.  The closest I ever came to unearthing a serious project backer was when a seemingly wealthy entrepreneur got it into his head that I was 'the next big thing'.  At the top of his list of mad plans he proposed a global music industry debut which would involve me and my busking buddies flying to the states and embarking on a musical tour along the old Mississippi river.  Our paddle steaming roadshow would take the form of a televised documentary which would ensure mainstream release and make ‘The Roadside Attraction’ a household name.  I found out along the bush telegraph that my over excited fan had left a trail of embezzled investors scratching their heads amid a history of shonky, hairbrained schemes.  It’s a good job I found out early in the game or I might have ended up stranded and broke in some far off airport or river delta town. 

As part of my north coast beachbum lifestyle I started reading a lot of new books as I lazed around on sun kissed beaches with a baited line in the surf.  Of all the books I read during that period ‘How to win friends and influence people’ had the greatest impact because it taught me how to make a good impression in a sea of extrovert souls.  All you’ve got to do is be the loudest but most substantial contender and then learn to shut your gob as all of the others have their say.  It wasn’t long before my spontaneous theatrics were noticed by those who mattered in the upmarket party scene and I was welcomed into their fold.  I found myself being driven to many a lavish affair in BMW’s and Mercedes Benze, by stinking rich old party boys who were easy to get laughing and separated from their cash.  I suppose they admired my dashing brand of self confidence and they approved of how I sang and told poems to all the pretty young girls.  The dirty old men around Byron are rampant and I guess any hint of a youthful flirtation is worth the expense to a  wrinkled, lonely eye. 

I reconnected with many of my old activist comrades who were living in the Byron Shire and keeping the developers on their money hungry toes.  It just so happened that my new acquaintances on the party circuit were those very people and it felt like I had infiltrated the camp of the enemy.  The proposed new Club Med resort for the Belongil estuary had the local activists in an uproar and there were regular rallies and protests being held in the streets of Byron Bay.  The Chief executive of the planned complex was staying in the area trying to soften up the community and in his attempts to win public acceptance for the project he actually offered me a job. I went along with his drunken ramblings about how I would supervise the entertainment at the new resort and the dirty old root rat laughed with pure delight when I told him we might include a 'feral cabaret spectacular' in the festivities. 

We are stardust ... we are golden ...

and we've got to get ourselves …  back to the garden.

The Byron Bay Environment Center was the main headquarters for the whole Northern rivers protest movement and it kept me well informed on any frontline actions in the area.  The word around the campfire was the next big blockade was going to take place in the Chealundi state forest, in the hills just outside of Grafton.  My coked out extravagance in Sydney had turned me into an apathetic shmook! so I decided to make up for some lost time and joined in the convoy.  I departed from Nimbin with Morty and some of the other buskers in a souped up V8 Holden that belonged to Gerry our T chest base player.  All of us had outstanding fines and warrants that could land us in the slammer so it was agreed we would do our tour of duty as ‘The Entertainment Patrol’.  In the weeks leading up to the first assault a virtual army of activist were mobilized and a fully equipped basecamp was established inside the restricted zone.  By the time we arrived it was absolute mayhem and the Chealundi clan spoke of police brutality worse than any they’d ever seen.  Everyone was exhausted from days of hectic protest action, but they just kept on fighting as the resistance grew in strength.  Protesters converged on the blockade from across the nation and the police force grew in numbers to deal with the swelling crowds.  The day after our arrival the first wave of hard line, mug coppers were relieved of their frontline duties, due mostly we suspect to public complaints. They were replaced by a far more civil breed of officers. The most dedicated of our tree spikers and boulder rolling track blockers had been rounded up and arrested, so cautious negotiations were being initiated between the opposing sides.   Now all the cops had to deal with was the mass of tangled chains and padlocks which bound our people to logging equipment and trees.  Tri-pods and quadrupeds were erected at key locations around the frontline and access points both into and out of the logging area were blocked by triangular wooden structures.  There were activists chained all over them from the base to the crows nest way up high, where the pole sitters held their ground in heartfelt defiance.  

We found out through official channels that the police had received special orders in relation to removing protesters from their perches.  At a previous protest action a tripod sitter had sustained a broken back due to lack of care by the cops and he was awarded a massive insurance payout by the Federal Government.  Now all removals are handled by a special crack team of emergency experts who’s main objective besides getting us out of the forest is to avoid hefty insurance payouts. The dismantling of each obstruction held up the logging operation for long periods and often days at a time.  The Emergency guys were in no hurry to lose their jobs through a rushed removal and their task became an almost scientific procedure.  The name of the game on our part was to erect tripods in the most inaccessible places so the cherry pickers couldn’t get close without knocking them down.  The frontline protests were being documented on numerous video recorders by our people and the cops knew that their every action was being stored on tape.  Camera crews from all the national networks were covering the event and their stories were being broadcast Australia wide.  In some cases the Chealundi blockade even made the international press and the army of cameramen and reporters enjoyed our frontline theatrics. 

Many of our mid blockade performances were used to supplement news footage and I saw my moosh on the six o’clock news every second day.  The best protest manoeuvre I saw while I was at Chealundi was a quadruped which had been obstructed from reach by a brightly muraled and wheelless Toyota van.  The greasy wheel hubs were dropped on a series of parallel concrete pipes which were partly buried in the ground.  In each of the pipes there was a teenage kid who was chained up by the ankles, wrists and head.  They were a brave young group of activists and their hair raising stunt came close to disaster when one of the pipes began to crumble under the weight of the van.  Ever so slowly a crane inched it's way along the narrow forest track and the multi-colored vehicle was eventually hoisted clear of the pipes.  The last we saw of it was a cloud of dust as the police pushed it down a steep pristine embankment. When the word came through that we had scored a federal court injunction at Chealundi the scene was transformed overnight.  The coppers relaxed in their heavy handed approach and it turned into a tribal victory dance for the protest community.  Expressions of tribal solidarity were the main feature of otherwise peaceful days as straight, suburban looking people and senior citizens danced arm in arm with the freaks and sang …

‘We Shall Not Be Moved’.

Morty and I were to become something of a hit with the more spirited of the police women and we even had the husky riot squad guys laughing at our cornball jokes. The comedy routine that was most effective in titillating the lines of stern police faces was a thing we did from the soundtrack of A Space Odyssey 2001.  All that was needed was a well placed,’Open the pod bay doors Hal’ and the fabricated masks of forced officialdom broke into smiles and mischievous grins. The bulk of the attending police battalions must have been Space Odyssey freaks as well and we just happened to hit on a common tribal humorism.  One morning I woke up in the back of Jerry’s car with my foot being tapped by a happy go lucky old police sergeant.  He sounded just like any of the country bumpkins I knew back on the farm as he said, “Come on bloke, You can’t sleep all day, ... you’ve got a show to do”. Fuck me sideways!, ... it’s turning into a bloody love festival.  Excuse me Searge … but aren’t we supposed to be enemies?  The campfire parties we had at Chealundi were fuelled by the knowledge that we had stopped the logging industry in it’s plunderous, clear felling tracks.  Towards the end of the blockade our main strategy was to drain the dwindling police budget and expose it through the media as a waste of public funds.  In time all of the money dried up and the law exodused from the forest amid a chorus of hearty cheers. Ian Cohen who went on to become a respected Green Politician had once hung off the bow of a nuclear ship to protest the military madness of our war mongering little planet.  Ian was a key inspirator of the whole Chealundi campaign and he was right in among the action at those heated frontline scenes.  Ian took me and my busking buddies on a special bush walk into the escarpment which was accompanied by a well informed commentary.  He could name all of the endangered trees and native species that we were working to protect and we stopped from time to time just to take in the awesome views.  As we took our little nature walk the most devastating vision to greet our eyes was the long range view of the gaping logging scar from a nearby ridge.  I fell to my knees and had an unexpected catharsis as I reeled at the vision before me.  I think that occurrence was my true initiation into the spirit of our cause and never since have I felt more emotional about our quest to save the trees.  It’s as if everything that had happened in my life was leading up to this one moment, where the evidence of human greed was made manifest in the destruction of so much pristine wilderness.

Just like a tree ... that’s standing by the waterside ...

we shall not be moved.

The ‘Epicenter’ in Byron bay was situated in an old whaling station that had been converted into a modern, well equipped community art facility.  The place was owned and run by a couple of ‘New Age’ inspired brothers who had a grand vision of art and spirituality under the same gigantic roof.  One of them was a wealthy, gay art buff who housed and supported the local talent while the other was an ardent guru follower who arranged Australian tours for an Eastern mystic known as ‘The Holy Mother.  Incorporated into the acres of studio and workshop space there was an Indian restaurant which was run by the artists and it served as an important tribal venue in the area. After the Chealundi victory a series of parties were thrown in the restaurant and surrounding gardens and this is where our resident DJ’s and lighting guys pioneered the early evolutions of the ‘Epicenter Doof’.  Techno-delic images and sounds blasted the senses from Friday night until early Sunday morning and that it seems was barely adequate to satisfy a growing public demand.  The dance parties became so big they were moved out of the restaurant to an enormous steel and aluminium, restored slaughter house.  Our regular weekend dance marathons were extended to include full blown mid week dance parties where very large and out of it gatherings were the accepted norm.

I see you baby, ... Shakin that Ass, ... Shakin that Ass, ...

I see you Baby!

I was living in an upstairs studio apartment which copped the full blast of the music as it echoed up the metal halls and corridors.  I had started writing the very first draft of the ‘Once upon a Planet’ storyline on a portable, Amstrad word processor and I found it almost impossible to concentrate on my work.  Besides the constant barrage of techno sounds I was also distracted by a never ending stream of my fellow artists who kept breezing in to score pot.  I had been trying to restrict my dealing activities to the cafe’s and bars, just so I could finish the manuscript but still they kept rolling in to scatter my thoughts to smithereens.  The art complex was undergoing restorations and the noise of cranes and jack hammers just added to my grief.  I needed an absolute interruption free work environment so I could keep my thoughts together and it suddenly dawned on me that I should construct a raft on the Belongil estuary and write the script on the portable computer.  My vision of an interruption free home base soon turned into hands on action and I started gathering up discarded restoration waste from the center.  I stored anything useful I found in my palm sheltered roof top garden and started counting the moments until I could have some peace and quiet in a new location.  Danny was one of the artists in residence at the center and he used to construct impressive, arty furniture with metal that he had recycled from the site. I got Danny to apply his welding skills to an old golf buggy I had fitted out mountain bike wheels.  The final creation was so sturdy that we could ride it like a rikshaw around his cluttered workshed. I transported my assorted tools and building materials down to the creek on the newly constructed buggy and for days I toiled in the stifling, sub tropical heat.  Eventually I was sitting inside a pyramid shaped, flat water vessel that floated like a cork and looked like something from ‘Apocalypse Now’. The pontoons for the raft were made of long bamboo poles which were covered with polystyrene foam from around the rusty old piping in the meatworks.  The foam sections were covered in a layer of plastic sheeting that I acquired from a friend of Dannys who was in the building game.  The cabin area was formed by two large triangles that were made of round treated pine.  The pine wood triangles sat on a bolted timber frame and were fastened at the central connecting point by re-cycled nails and discarded twine.  The whole thing was then covered with tarps and mosquito netting to keep the biting, stinging wetland bloodsuckers at bay. Once established in my new home I stayed out on the estuary for days at a time.  I was more than content to just take in the ambiance of my new surroundings and bang away on the twelve volt powered word processor among the wonders of the mangrove swamps.  My solar powered battery pack was sufficient to run the computer, a light and a small radio TV all day and all night if I wanted.  The only time I rode my pusbike into Byron was to pick up supplies or watch a band at the Rails Hotel. When I had composed a significant block of text it was saved on a floppy disk and then eagerly turned into hard copy at the environment center in town.  As I powered along with the story in my peaceful retreat, rare glimpses of nature in it’s spectacular everyday flow taught me how to truly appreciate my situation. I came to perceive of myself as a mere speck in the infinite grid of life and I learned how to draw inspiration from the smallest event in the wilds. In time even the biting mosquitoes seemed vital to the over all perfection of my world. Often I would wake up in the morning to a spoonbill or a crane snuffling for yabbies in the tidal mud just a couple of feet from my shadecloth doorway. It was not unusual as I cleaned a fish by the bank to have large, swooping sea eagles dive down and pluck the discarded intestines off the water.  The most amazing thing I saw on my up the creek adventure was in a sheltered lagoon near an old railway bridge that crossed the estuary.  A school of baby mullet were breaking the surface in the moonlight and a group of tiny bats were flitting between them in mid air.

You  don’t  see  things  like  that  everyday.  

My method for moving the raft from one location to another up and down the estuary was a sturdy, sun cured bamboo pole.  It was strong enough to lever me through the boggy tidal shallows and long enough to touch the bottom in the deepest parts of the creek. The start of the Christmas tourist invasion promised increased road traffic and noise in my secluded lagoon, so I decided to move the raft a little further up stream.  As I was maneuvering out of a narrow inlet into the main flow of the estuary I spotted some small bait fish swimming erratically on the surface.  I thought it might have been some kind of mating display but they didn’t attempt to swim away when I disturbed the school with my pole.  I scooped up a net full of the fish without any difficulty and when I examined them closer it appeared they were close to death.  At the mouth of the inlet I found a dirty great flathead laying belly up in the mud.  It was dead as a doornail and it wasn’t long before I discovered more dead and dying fish.  Once in the main body of water I beheld a sight that I hope I never have to witness again.  Every imaginable type of fish , eel, crab and even waterbirds were floating lifeless and bloated on the surface.  Nothing was spared.  I even found a red bellied black snake fighting for it's last breath, as it writhed and twisted among the mangrove roots. The riverbank on both sides was stained by a yellow, bubbling scum and a multi coloured chemical slick, similar to the spill from an outboard motor but much worse.  Up on the railway bridge a group of people had assembled and among them I spotted my comrades from the Environment centre.  Samples of the water were being gathered in glass jars from the slippery banks and I was enlisted to fill a container from the furthermost reaches of the swamp. 

Bob Cummins a local freelance reporter and activist was running around with his video recorder collecting footage of the fishkill.   With a stills camera and tripod strapped around his neck and shoulders and the Hi-8 above his head, he waded knee deep and cursing through the poisoned water.  Bob finally got to where I was moored on the opposite bank and asked if I wanted to do an interview.  He said it would put a great angle on the story to include a 'Huckleberry Finn' type of riverman's perspective in his article.  As he was setting up his video camera he told me about a folk musician from the sixties called ‘Pete Seeger’, who had gone to live up the Hudson river in a raft, as a statement to protest the rising pollution in the North American river systems.  After hearing this intriguing story I felt like I had been elected in some way by circumstance to continue the crusade to protect our waterways.  Bob managed to get the tripod perched on a high bank so he could get some good overhead shots of the raft.  As I was waiting around for him to get started with the interview I took in the long range veiw of the carnage and my anger began to gather steam.  I had been so busy helping to gather water samples that I hadn’t really thought about how the fishkill made me feel.  By the time Bob had set up the shot and commenced the interview I was a raging ball of passion with a lot to say about the grimness of the scene.  I gave an articulate account of the trail of dead fish I had followed out of the inlet, but as the questions were being fired I was not relating to the camera at all.  Instead I was gathering up armfuls of the floating corpses and throwing them into a large fish container that I kept on the raft.  Each newly filled tub was dumped on a growing pile of dead fish, eels and crabs as I strived to maintain a steady dialogue about the inadequacy of the Byron Bay sewage system. 

At the crescendo of my fish gathering routine I stood over the grim catch and confronted the camera with an accusing address.  I pointed at the pile of rotting carcasses and declared to the viewer, “That’s not a pile of dead fish you see there,...  it’s a symbol of our own doom, if we don’t strive for global sustainability”.  Bob’s article came out a few weeks later in a national tabloid called the People Magazine.  Apparently his Huckleberry Finn perspective was the thing that sold the story to the Editor. Though it's publication it was hoped that a wider audience would be made aware of what happens when the sewage infrastructure of a small tourist town gets overloaded.  An article appeared in the local Byron paper a few days after the fishkill which was full of shire council bullshit and a coverup grand in scale.  The lying mongrels said the cause of the fishkill was a recent influx of cornflake seaweed which blocked the gills of the local fish population.  I was living right there among it all and I knew for a fact that the seaweed had washed out with the tide a few days earlier.  A couple of pages over in the same paper the local Mayor announced the forthcoming construction of new council chambers in the township of Mullumbimbi.  It was budgeted at an estimated thirteen million dollars and when completed it would rate as one of the most contemporary building designs in the Northern Rivers.  If there was any justice in the world those dirty Chardonnay sipping arseholes would be made to conduct their service to the community from a riverside location right near the outfall pipes that poisoned my beautiful home.

The tide returns to it’s home in the sea 

from a river that has traveled our poisoned soil

washed in the flow of a thousand sewers

is the seeping scum from the world of man.

Down through the rapids go a tone of dead fish,

caught in an eddy of human waste

and the catch of the day brings a seafood platter

with a slightly petro- chemical taste.