U3A Writing: Stone Axe
In Merle Parkin’s poem an axe head – “half-buried by the storms of centuries’’ – serves as a “window’’ to a distant past.
Where time has paused beside a stony mound
Of finger-moulded, campfire-blackened clay,
The bones of some primeval meal are found
On sands well trodden in another day.
Unhafted now, long-since, an axe-head lies,
Half-buried by the storms of centuries,
And seems to listen for the ghostly cries
Of wraiths that linger round the black-box trees.
Relics of patient hands that worked the stone,
Sharpened and grooved it for the haft of wood;
Hands vanished, but for splintered specks of bone
Scattered about, where once the wurlies stood.
The years have claimed the coals that erstwhile glowed,
And saltbush cloaks the midden with its grey,
Over the axe, the sands of time have flowed,
To hide the fleeting memories away.
