My Pop

It's been a sad week for my family.  In the early hours of Monday morning, my grandfather died.  In the preparation for the funeral, all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren have been asked to think of one memory we have of our Pop. It was hard to choose just one, but I ended up thinking a bit about the amazing life he had and how much I loved talking to him about it. He was one of 11 children growing up during the Depression and in his earlier years he drove bullock teams and worked in the timber industry up on the NSW mid-north coast. For most of his life, he was a fisherman, and that brought some great stories as well. 

So, in the end, I chose a memory that related to that. It was the day we took Pop to Timbertown about twenty years ago. He recognised things from his own life, which triggered a whole lot of memories he shared with us. As I thought about the memory of that day, this poem came to me.  I'm sharing it in honour of him:

Timbertown

He watched the bullocks
walk their long, slow arc,
and his eyes snapped into focus
like a recognition of old friends
strangely out of place.

Broad-shouldered creatures,
remembrances of a past
when, 12 years old
he drove the team,
through thick treed bush
and birds sang duets with cracking whips -
the road an arcane zig-zag through the hills,
faintly mocked in the dusty circle
trodden by these weary beasts.

Later he holds the whip
between his sturdy fingers
(one joint missing from a sawmill mishap)
coils his mighty shoulders once again,
cuts an arc in the sky,
and lets his muscles and his ears feel the memory.

my Pop with the bullocks on that day.

and cracking the whip.