Maureen Clifford © The #ScribblyBarkPoetIt stood out
It stood out there in the paddock, long abandoned, all alone
with a rusting tank ‘ long side it in which frogs now made their home.
And the mills vanes cast their shadow ‘cross the corrugated tin of the roof
or what was left there – sadly most had fallen in.
The white picket fence was leaning with its palings all askew
for the termites had been feasting. Well! That’s just what termites do.
There were sheep out in the paddock, grazing on the rocks and dust
not on grass, there wasn’t any, just the sun baked brown earth’s crust.
Drought is hard on everybody and not all will make it through.
But most people keep on trying for there’s nothing else to do.
Those old sheep were looking skinny, not too much meat on their bones.
They were just holding together. There’s no nutriment in stones.
Weather board and rusted iron that had long seen better days
,dirty windows, lifeless, soulless, fractured, broken,
merely gazed with disinterest at the blue sky where no single white cloud lurked
and it seemed that for the moment the rain clouds their job had shirked.
Raucous flocks of white corellas clustered on an Ironbark tree
Their cacophony of screeches Mother Nature’s symphony.
And out back a little section with a rusted iron fence
which no longer had the strength to stand
or make the least pretense
of offering protection to the tombstones gathered there.
Stones now broken, cracked and crumbled, leaning sadly in despair.
Hard to read the worn inscriptions carved by a now long gone hand
.But their story was so poignant – men and women from this land
.Another gravesite showed itself further along the track,
the carcass of a Bedford truck that hadn’t made it back.Rust in peace
– out in the paddock, leather seats were cracked and worn
and a tree grew through its roof now as it sat there all forlorn.
Just a pile of rusted metal, with a trim of pitted chrome
Once a farmers pride and joy who sadly didn’t make it home.
Scenes like this around our nation aren’t uncommon,
sad to say,when Mother Nature deals her trump card and folks up and walk away.
This was someone’s dream, now shattered, this was someone’s home, now lost
when their chips fell on the table and landed where they were tossed.
Weather board and rusted iron, fencing wire and corrugations,
red dirt roads leading to nowhere, leaking lifeblood of our nations.
And a last final indignity – if things weren’t rough enough
was to see on the horizon a dark cloud.
Oh things were tough
and about to become even worse with top soil on the move
as an ominous dark cloud, relentless , roiled and boiled to provet
hat when things can’t just get better, then they surely can get worse –
Mother Nature sends a dust storm – just another bloody curse.
Nelle's journey 