A Red Gum.

A red-gum grows on Streaky-Rock Hill,

Where  kookaburras cackle and  cockatoos shrill,

Currawongs yodell and tomtits twitter,

 While lizards laze and butterflies flutter.

Dreamtime Koorie once wandered this land,

From far blue mountains, to rocky sea strand.

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 Now gritty, city buildings crowd out the view,

Where wallabies thumped with the wallaroo...

Suburbs sprawl, spewing foul smog,

Where the bush was haven for boy and his dog.

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  We roamed around high sandstone reaches,

And surfed wild Wattamolla’s beaches,

Digging for pippies with our feet,

And running naked in the heat,

Plunging headlong in the spray,

Just enjoying every day.

Catching whiting on the tide, and blackfish from the sheer cliff-side…..

 At night with campfire coals aglow,

 We slept with surf’s surging flow.

Where are you now,  freckled beach-girl ?

Remember our promise, so sure yet soon forgot?

I heard you married a lawyer. You said you wanted money. Did you get a lot?

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Since then the years sped past, afloat with useless ballast, my die was cast.

 Now memories search not sensual pleasure.

(of which I’ve had considerable measure)

 But focus on that early time,

When the world was new

 And mine. 

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  I’ll rest by a hollow of this old gum-tree,

 Visions fading gradually,

Projecting to eternity,

While the world whirls by so frantically.

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 A life misspent?   Yes, I’m to blame.

 Thanks mum, for an interesting game.

Perhaps we are just puppets on a string,

With no free choice in anything,

Our master just Genetic Code,

Ending when we’re out of road.

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 Some believe in perpetual bliss,

 Ready at God’s right hand,

Supplicating to His command

 A fate, I pray to miss.

I crave no contemplation

Of eventual damnation. 

I had my paradise alive,

And hell as well.

Let those behind survive.

   …… ‘Ric Williams 

Is it doggerel or is it poetry.

Well. One of my favourite poems includes the line “and the pig got up and slowly walked away.”  What was that from, someone?                      

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