A few of my scribbles--Tricia McGill

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It’s cold wet and dreary in my part of the world as I write, so here are just a few snippets of Aussie whimsy from my collection of scribblings to cheer things up.

Glorious Day

I set out for a walk on a fine spring day

The flowers I saw in merry profusion

Into a lake ran a stream so fey.

I thought it was a grand illusion

Beneath my feet the grass was green.

From new mown fields I smelt the hay

It really was a peaceful scene.

Oh glorious world. Oh glorious day.

Children ran by—so full of joy,

picking flowers and singing beneath the sun

I bent to smile down at a tiny boy,

but he took off away at a sprightly run

How carefree they were, these girls and boys

Like splendid shafts from a sunny ray

Not worried unduly, but sharing their joys.

Oh glorious world. Oh glorious day.

A horse in a paddock called out to me.

A dog barked from a farmhouse just over the hill

Some magpies flew up to the branch of a tree.

Kangaroos were feeding near a windmill

Some joeys amongst them prepared for flight.

A kookaburra laughed loudly, and then flew away

To soar on the wind to a magnificent height.

Oh glorious world. O glorious day.

The woes of the world are all left behind.

On days such as this my cares slip away

Problems disperse like dust in the wind.

Oh glorious world. Oh glorious day.

The Stockman

The bush and plains are the stockman’s home.

The pine clad mountains and valleys to roam

His hat rests low on his proud set head

and covers his hair of the brightest red.

His dog lopes close by his horses’ side,

and the pair never tire through a long day’s ride.

Old Irish has dreamed since he was a lad

of riding all day across this wide land.

His mother and father had both been rovers.

His dad was a man well known by the drovers

They’d died up along the Murrays’ side

and were buried near that great river so wide.

Irish knows well how to laugh and to cry;

to share life’s sorrows ‘neath God’s clear blue sky

He knows all there is about herding cows,

about riding all day when the wind just howls.

Once on a trek though the great desert land,

he almost got lost as for gold he panned

Old Irish has been where black parrots fly,

where the mulga and scrub reach well past the thigh.

Past rivers so dry that the cracks split the earth

and no one can say what the red land is worth

He’s been where the ‘roos jump high in the air,

where wallabies roam over land green and fair.

He thought once of settling, of taking a wife,

but decided with forethought that wasn’t the life

No drover would fit in a life in the city;

to leave all this space would be more than a pity.

In a place like Sydney or Melbourne or Darwin

where the people all flock and there’s plenty of sin

No woman in town would put up with his roving,

this need to be moving, and constantly going

To the back blocks and endless wide open plains,

far away from the city and shops and the trains

There’s no female around who’d put up with the hide

of a man who yearns just to be free to ride.

The man who knows joy in a good horse beneath you,

a dog for a pal and restrictions so few

The hard times and good times; the dust and the heat,

where no man gives in to a thing like defeat.

The bush folk have ways the townsfolk don’t know.

They’ll greet you with pleasure, and then let you go

To wander the wide open plains that you love,

where at night all the stars fairly blaze up above.

On a night when the air is crystal clear,

you’ll sit ‘neath a sky where the stars seem so near

You can reach out and touch them in the frosty sky

and be closer to God than you’ll be when you die.

A stockman knows all about drought dust and heat,

but in his way of life won’t put up with defeat.

His life’s filled with pleasures no town man would know.

Old Irish is off where the wanderers go.

This last one is set in the doc’s waiting room, where I seem to be spending far too much time of late.

The Doctor’s Surgery

Are you shorter than you used to be?

A strange but smart enough query

It’s listed there with many more

on the inside of my doctor’s door

With other questions about your health,

asked bluntly and without much stealth

Do you require a cholesterol check?

Or some acupuncture for a pain in the neck?

Perhaps the others that sit with me

In this my doctor’s nice surgery

Have bunions or wind, are feeling weak,

or maybe like me have come to seek

A reason for what is making them crook,

why they often feel dizzy while reading a book

Did that one over there wake up with a pain?

Perhaps she is simply feeling the strain

With a boy who plays up, shouts and screams

She’s probably coming apart at the seams

Ah, here’s the doctor, I think it’s my turn,

to unload my problems so I can learn

What’s wrong, what’s the trouble with me?

It will all be unfolded in his surgery

He’ll tell me I’m well, I’m fit and fine, 

and I’ll leave with a smile until the next time

When I want the assurance of someone so wise,

who’ll look in my ears, down my throat, in my eyes.

Some reassurance will see me right,

Some kind words of comfort; some doctorly insight

I’ll leave his office on jaunty feet,

glad to get out on the sunny street

It’s good to know that I’m fit and whole.

I know I feel fine for my doc told me so.

 

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