My daughter, Laura, has a real passion for the land and a real love for writing poetry. I have her permission to post her poems on my website. They link well with my love of our rural life.

Hard to Not Look Back

Down upon a grassy bank, beside a flowing creek

sits a girl. A little red cloud kelpie pup curled up upon her feet.

She looks over distant paddocks, over oat crops growing tall

and she daydreams of her country while the kookaburras call…

She dreams about the harvest and the wheat bins noise and smell,

of summer with relentless heat and the cockies screech and yell.

The days of stormy weather and the frosts upon the ground,

the seeder in the paddock with dad going round and round.

Lambs and baby animals. That hope that comes with spring,

the beauty of a fading dusk and the promise each day brings.

Autumn’s cool surrender as it traps the hours of light,

the stillness in the evening, as day fades into the night.

But the land is unforgiving, as this girl will come to learn

a vast and untamed majesty that can flood and freeze and burn.

One minute like a paradise, the next a living hell,

a place each farming familiy has come to know so well.

And every country kid well knows that strong love for the land,

that resilience and persistence shown when things aren’t all that grand.

The hope that lives within them, a connection to that space

to every grain of drying soil upon the bloody place

And when things get really trying, and when it starts to look real crook

it is hard. To keep on going and to have a good outlook,

because the money starts to dry up fast, along with cracking  dirt,

the sheep grow weak and hungry and it all begins to hurt.

But when the hope starts dying, and the light begins to fade

that is when towns band together in the families  that they’ve made,

to endure through all the heartache and to triumph when its tough

with a strength that keeps their heads held high when they’re thinking

‘that’s enough’.

And I know this girl will always feel such a strong love for her home

for she’s had hope and faith installed in her while she has lived and grown.

So although there has been heartache, and there has been a lot of pain

She knows that if she had the choice she would do it all again.

Down upon a dusty bank, near a dried up cracking creek

sits a woman. An aging sheepdog rests his head upon her feet.

She looks over tangled fences as they weave across the flat

and she is trying to look forward, but it’s hard to not look back.

But she will make sure she remembers and doesn’t block it out

because the past is full of memories she wouldn’t live without.

The light begins its morning dance and a new time has begun

as the dry dirt underneath her warms from a glowing morning sun

The shadows move from fading dawn and the red dust turns to gold,

the magpies serenade her as the new day now unfolds.

She whistles graying kelpie, and he struggles to a stand

and together they start walking on their home, their place, their land.