In from the Outback

Hi all,

just been sitting here with lots of thoughts going around in my head when I had this urge to write something.

I looked up at a picture hanging on the wall depicting a country scene, a stockman driving a herd of cattle across a river and into the vast aussie plains, the following is the result of that inspiration.

Gee I hope you like it, I sort of had a few tears when I read it back, I really had myself in the picture.

Hope you are having as good a day as I am, yes, that's right, it's good to be alive!!

Cheers.  dazza

In From The Outback

I’ve just come in from the Outback

Where the land is stubble bare

Nothing more than open cracks

Forced wider under the summer glare,

Where lonely clumps of Mallee

Wind their way along a rim,

Where many moons gone before

A waterhole… lay pristine to the brim.

One can rest upon a craggy ridge

And gaze the horizon to the west,

And watch the fiery ball retire

Without the hint of any protest,

Boil the billy without a permit signed

And unroll a swag upon a gravel bed,

And wait for the golden dawning

With a star filled galaxy… overhead.

I had no yearning to return…

To a city so cold and dispassionate,

To be locked away within walls of glass

To walk the streets fearing combat,

But the time had come to rekindle ties

With a family… so distant for so long,

Yes, a man needs to know what he had left behind

Will never forget... where they’d come from.

But soon the call of the Outback beckoned

Knocking urgently at the door of my heart,

I rolled my swag and said goodbye

I was now time for me to depart,

So I closed the gate and I strode away

Leaving many tears of despair behind,

Yes, the call of the outback proved once again…

It is there that my life is resigned.

So here I am… back with my lot

Not much… but Ne’re a regret,

I have no need for the gold of fools

Nor the use of a political alphabet,

I have my cobbers, my horse and my dog,

That’s all I need to survive…

Yes, it’s here in the Outback of this our great land…

That my heart and my soul… did derive.

Darrell B Parker

Weaver of words and emotions