U3A Writing: Golden Summers
In this heart-felt poem Cynthia Bloxsidge longs to escape from the grim landscape of city life, back to the natural wonders of the bushland.
I miss the golden summers
The days I used to spend
In company with the willow tree
That grows by river bend.
Just down from the rambling homestead
Clad snug in rusting iron
Close by the casuarina clump
Where the east wind does her sighing.
I long to see the clear blue sky
The rich brown soil below
And the ring-barked gums on the river flats
Where the saffron thistles blow.
My tired feet are dragging
On these pavements, hot and hard
Where once they rested easy
On a wooden-railed stock yard.
The jagged city skyline is massed
With moving cranes.
My skyline’s filled with magpie geese,
Blue herons on the plains.
I try to close my weary mind
To this mad activity
And hear the song of the butcher bird
As he plays in the willow tree.
The raging motors snarl at me
As in the street I stand
And wait for a sign from the traffic lights
To cross to the ‘Promised Land’,
That concrete slab of pedestrian bliss
Which I will have to share
With a host of other weary souls,
Not one of them who care
That my mind has flown to a sweeter place
Forever to be free to hear the rustling of the leaves
In the graceful willow tree.
The midday sun has drawn the smell
Of the melting roadway tar.
Foul petrol fumes pollute the air
From the seething motor car.
In a gully deep in the purple hills
Where the wild boronia grows
The bushland scent is drifting
To the place that the willow chose.
If I could break these tiresome bonds
And from this grim landscape flee,
I’d run and throw my arms about
The sturdy willow tree.
