Passing Visage: an Australian outback town
The usher to this town, a cemetery;
A dark but warm reminder of
Valued lives lived in measured days
When time was not such a willing driver
A community hall that shines like a penny
Shows there’s caring souls hereabouts
A curio shop in mixed shades of pink
To the tourist, as good as a shout
Comes a block-shaped building
With a sunken awning encased in a mottled blue
Seeming maybe, a grain store once
Or a 'hardware', I’d wager too
A general store with a sign saying 'come on in!’
With plastic streamers against the keen flies
A wide veranda with a long wooden seat
Invites you to settle and just rest your eyes
The picture-show is no longer living
Just a well-loved thing of the past
Like the jaffas, smarties and columbines
You'd eat stingily in a bid to make them last
Now looking very much more like a fortress
With its' well boarded up front door and
With 'faded' promo’s of your western heroes
Was it John Wayne, Cooper or Ford?
A railway station awaits your need
Save the track, that is no longer there
A station master's house that serves for photos alone
No staff to be seen anywhere
A water tower is there as a rusting reminder
Of steamers that long used to run
With a bowser nearby surrendering slowly it seems
To too many hours in the sun
A corner-faced weathered building
Shows ‘bank’ above the one door
With a house at the rear that could serve as a home
Per chance a banker might one day come to call
A stoic brick house way back from the road
All but lost to its captor, the grass
A battered 'Tooths' sign on a fence all its own
Relating to other felled buildings past ..?
The last fleeting glance I get as I drive on through
Is of the pub on the south end of town
With a first floor showing an array of rooms
Where tired miners would once have bedded down.
Up a hill and you’re away and gone
A town you’ll not likely see again
Reflecting a past that was once so fine
Rich with laughter and loose-coupled friends
From my notebook Grahame J Flynn Views in Verse
