2012-12-25         One Drover’s Christmas           By Bruce Prewer  

The drovers were on a stock route

watching their herds by night,

out of the east came some min min*

that spooked the men with light.

They seemed to sing with light,

they seemed to sing in the darkness

a music both sour and sweet,

it entered the soul with catharsis,

the drover’s boy danced to the beat.

One min min beckoned the boss man,

so he left the herd to the rest,

the min min danced on before him

like a lost soul re-possessed.

They came at last to Menindee

near a stable behind the pub,

the drover slowly dismounted

and tied his horse to a shrub.

He stood and waited for guidance,

though his throat cried out for a beer,

the min min stopped at a door

and the drover swallowed his fear.

The door was half off its hinges,

but he dragged it open wide,

he saw a weary young woman

with a new born baby that cried.

It was nothing like he had expected,

he did something he hadn’t done for years.

he fell down on his knees in that stable

and shed unaccustomed tears.

Were they tears of joy or sorrow?

he never did know for sure,

but he did dare take a new stock route

no drover had travelled before.

From the Poems for Pilgrims collection, 2006.

*Note: min min are the spirit lights of the forests and deserts in the oral traditions of the original Australians, the Aboriginal Peoples who have been custodians of the Land for over sixty thousand years.

Bruce Prewer is an Australian Uniting Church minister who has served most of his life in remote areas of the country. He has been and continues as pastor to indigenous and non-indigenous exploring the mystery of the Incarnation and attempting to inculturate it by using story, legends, far-fetched tales, rituals, signs and symbols native to both groups.