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| 'Some of us wonder about long ago tribes / who camped at the swamp where spoonbills bend / through reflections of rusting harrows and disc ploughs ...' |
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| Photo by Marion Cookson (nee Kruss), 1985. |
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| '... looking at a tattered black and white photo / Aunt Margaret, leaning forward / said I remember that!' |
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| Carting sheafs of oats: photo by Marion Cookson, 1946. |
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1. a gathering of relatives or friends after a separation
Eight years old, the word sings in my head.
I savour its strange vowels, watch my cousins
hang balloons and streamers from old beams
in the shearing shed, scrubbed boards smelling of
lanolin and sheep overlaid by coffee and cake.
Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents
voices soar over and around, rise into roof trusses,
bounce back with the clink of cups and saucers.
We sit outside for speeches and photos
celebrate our name on this land for 100 years
a Millsian concept of ownership through work
and each of us knows the feel of it under our boots
the look of it by season, the smell of it,
the sounds it makes at night,
its near-silence at midday.
Some of us wonder about long ago tribes
who camped at the swamp where spoonbills bend
through reflections of rusting harrows and disc ploughs,
shiny blades of the new windmill
sweeping up the wind.
The old tell us no-one knows if such tribes existed
or how they vanished. Perhaps
they drifted away to distant mountains
but there are no stories.
So we tell our stories of building the first house
roofed with bark shingles
its squat Cornish chimney
how the front room became the district post office
carrying news of sheep, prices, bushfires, drought,
so unlike enclosed cottage rows
in tidy Cornish landscapes
and in old eyes a glint of adventure
the young listen a while then run off to play.
2. the act of uniting again
Three months in a wooden ship
blown by unreliable winds
cramped always, heated and frozen by turns
meeting at last on the docks
skirts flying down rope ladders, rowed ashore
eyes searching, scouring crowds
already developing that far away look
that will take them out where horizons shimmer
and visions open wide as skies
but for now safely clasped
in familiar arms.
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| We 'celebrate our name on this land for 100 years / a Millsian concept of ownership through work / and each of us knows the feel of it ... the smell of it ... the sounds it makes ...' |
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| The poet's great-aunt, Grace McLeay, with horses. Photo by Marion Cookson, nee Kruss, c. 1920 or earlier. |
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A century later television stations traced
Uncle William and Aunt Margaret
flew them from Cornwall
to arrive dazed after twenty hours on a plane
unsticking themselves, stretching squashed bones
walking through narrow sheep tracks
to a sudden glare of flashing lights
hugged by strangers
microphones thrust into faces
‘How does it feel
and what do you think of Australia?’
After the TV hype they sat in lounge chairs
drank tea from gold-rimmed floral cups
admired a crystal-fronted cabinet of souvenirs –
a piece of raw opal, a silver-mounted emu egg,
two Wedgwood plates, a photo of the farm.
They made conversation, polite
and disconnected until
the photo albums came out and
looking at a tattered black and white photo
Aunt Margaret, leaning forward
said ‘I remember that!’
3. the state of being united again
At first there is awkwardness, an unsettling
between the drift back into old patterns
and tentative exploration of the possible.
Now temptation rides on impatience
and the fragile craft careens towards rocks.
Hand in hand at the brink of trust
they almost founder staring ahead into
a tearing apart a shattering of timbers
but they hold their true course
and later they will look back wondering
how their faith in navigation by stars
enabled them to chart unknown oceans
and to name a geography
of headlands, plants, animals, fish, birds,
cataloguing each ancient discovery
fitting it into place in a new theory of the world.
Copyright Susan Kruss 2003
Posted 15 September 2003
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