The rain came today
Prayers with joy
Hooperin!
Hollerin!
Loud
Down at the local bar
All alfresco
And Old farmers watched with joy
A maddening crowd
Of tighes
And Billy Tyers said my wheat may grow
And they all laughed
The rain has past
Too quickly son
A new wheat farmer
A young greenhorn
Out here, will never last

My last saucepan
Amid the ashes
A last possession
Bent
But never enough to stop me
Boiling the water
Whilst
I lost everything
We’re not losing our cup of tea
We’re not giving up
Still
There is hope
Even if my house has gone
Others
Are hanging on
And I must help
I’ll build again
There is no time for feeling sorry
Only for pouring the tea
For heroes

Mother is sick Old Joe
And Angels beckon
Time
Hovers sweetly
Now
And on her own rainbow
She will rise
Deservedly
Amid the loves of mystery
To so many
A great life finds an end
For a new start
An old flame with a new heart perhaps
Will meet you in heaven
Old Joe
Is there something in your heart
Perchance
That
Old Betty can grasp
Does Cupid’s arrow fly?
Like old
Alone for years
Surely
She did her best
For you
It’s been so long since you have both loved
Anyone
And God speaks mountains
Of you both from where we sit
When he sends the angels to earth
On a breath
And on a prayer
The signs are there
Heaven waits
Indeed
Old Betty has not waited in Vain
For her knight in shining armour

Beautiful and orb like
Glimmers of nacre purples and blues
Brilliant reflections
Through a gentle and generous sunlight
A thousand little bubbles leave her hand
Rapid fire it seems
My sweetest girl has mastered this art
And her daddy plies the froth
To me
Still a young and patient man
The Dad I could never be
Albeit
My time has passed
But the joy of Hayley’s bubbles
Is another conduit
Of her Poppy’s love

Puritans
Believed
He in public
She at home
He talking
She listening
He preaching
She hearing
The woman is a witch
In the devil’s service
And they will die
On the rope
And sadly they did

Physical and psychological harm
Tragedy
A church entertaining sadness
And grief
For the lust of mentors
Vermin
Un-trapped
As your miserable lives now
Bang into walls
Each of you
Responsible
In a rotten human society
Where our kids were forsaken
To your illusory trust

So fantastic were Lawson’s poems
That I bow to him with glee
And when I die my miserable death
He just may be here with me

You see it’s a mutual admiration society
This writing of bloody poems
And you need to capture the readers
“Imagination”, with interest as it roams

And Mary Gilmore got it wrong
When she knocked me old mate back
What on earth was she thinking?
That he took the bottle back

A gentleman of kindness and talent
Our Henry was underrated
But the gentry feared his honesty
And his writings were ill fated

So jail time became the norm
And Henry suffered well
There was little chance of helping a man
Who couldn’t write the toffs up swell?

The life he hoped was gone in a flash
And the bottle grasped his soul
For nothing whatsoever read “Australian”
Of class literature “would take such a dreadful toll”

And you charged like a raging bull
In the night
A Spanish supremo
Across our City
Most Unexpectedly
With abhorrence and a power cubed
You pursued a destination, and
Blinded by your own debris?
Passed without utterance
Like a silent demon
Whilst we slept
But in your wake many spoke
Of your destructive ill
And why Santa never made it to Darwin

Jesus they fried you Bruno
In a chair
Those bastards
All about that Lindbergh kid
Suspect evidence
Never a doubt
In my mind Bruno
And the Governor wept
For his career, and
For famous parents
With clout
Whilst you did the dying
For truth
And they did the lying
For proof

You see young men passing old men
In all walks of life
How sad it is that neither speaks
And neither takes the time
The young man’s in a hurry the old man’s in his prime
To what do we regale?
And miss