PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

(i)

nipple succoured

tobacco days

molasses smoked

and hazy browned

and furrowed,

braised and glazed end days

rattling through

the rusted turnings of

the forgotten seasons



pasture drawn and sweltering days,

clung like parched flies

around a forgotten hide;



cool watering, brown

and slurried days,

meandering down the channelling

of morning to the evenings,

bringing a flood of ochre across the plains

of yesterdays and years...



(ii)

in the last of the sun's fingering rays,

shoulders tanned and glistening,

the caneman comes

kicking dust off the track:

laughing eyes raised brim beneath,

sun tracking smile

and lazy teeth



with a bluey pup in a burlap bag

and a ribald song as softly sung

as clouds hung in midday blue;

sauntering and swaggered



an image cut in dust and sweat

clean where the world runs slow,

like the way they ply their stories,

like the way they breed their toads here-by

- heavy damp on

dust and dry -

and all in all in its own good time;

in the season of the white lips...



in a north coast summertime





(iii)

nipple succoured

tobacco days;

thick evening’s flooding dark

brings:

mirages of

the plantation days,

of smoke filled nights

under pylon stays;

lattice worked and patterned stars;

tall tales and other yarns

from Mandalay

and Suvla Bay,

spread from the 'baccy mouths

of the broad browned men of cane:

come home

again





nipple succoured

tobacco days

suckled sweet

in the browning,

fitful in the afternoons

sweat embalmed in the afternoons

that presage the storm wrung strains

of rain

and rain

and more of it yet - bloody rain!





(iv)

Would that these were still the days…



not these now,

the tattered, deserted days,

not these,

the forgetful,

the precious, wasting days

run together into the vague mirages that have usurped those others,

the brighter born,

northern days



Instead, now, the fluttering,

the leaving days,

flown as if leaves blown

across some dream

only remembered when halfway wakeful



as mostly it is now, on these long days

bereft of summers’ afternoons



fluttering and fallen days,

stalled days; entrapped

by the endless tide of yesterdays



(v)

nipple succoured

tobacco days

molasses smoked

hazy, browned,

furrowed and braised,

glazed end days

rattling through

the rusted turnings of

the forgotten seasons;

ripples in

the flow of

sullen time,

ripples in the flow of the long dry beds

that all the days since these bright alive

days have become;

days carried long, away

further every day





Days of a north coast

summertime



days of

...once upon...



a northern time.