Francis Duggan Poems

The blackbird by the bare hedgerow scratch for slugs under the dead leaves
By the narrow bog road that leads up to Gneeves
And the cold winds of February with a Wintery chill
Blow up the high fields and across the bog hill
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You have a God to believe in with me that is okay
And with your family you go to your house of worship for to pray
But does this make a better person out of you
And to your higher self are you one who is true
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She is not what you'd call an endearing old dear
The fierceness in her stare puts brave men to fear
In her early seventies but not frail in any way
And until she die as a spinster she will stay
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The stories of their great years by them often told
Some men don't grow wiser they merely grow old
That age brings with it wisdom to them does not apply
Why some do not learn from living one must wonder why
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I've heard the blue tits young chirp in the hollow log
And I've heard the curlew pipe o'er Shannaknock bog
And the bluebells, snowdrops and primroses I've seen
In Spring blooming on the ditch of the pebbly bohreen.
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My wonder at my lack of knowledge does grow
The more I learn of life the less I Know I know
Of the World I live in suppose in my case ignorance is bliss
But then what one never had how can one ever miss?
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Bordered by barbed wire fences and stone ditches paddocks stony and brown
Off of the road out of Colac on towards Camperdown
A Land that was old in the dinosaur time
The source of many song and story and rhyme.
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The wind blows warm air and the brown dust is flying across the bare paddock in the sunny sky
Forty six degrees the warmest day of Summer and everywhere looking so bare and so dry
In the south of the Country the bush fires are raging fanned on by the warm breath of the strong breeze
It burns it's way through the dry and brown grasslands and it burns it's way through the bushes and trees
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Not much has changed for Australia's Indigenous people since Prime Minister Kevin Ruud sorry to them did say
For wrongs against them by Australian Governments the hurt of the past is slow to go away
We may never again have the Stolen Generation But many Indigenous Australians live in poverty
It is sad to think that many First Australians are doing it tough in the twenty first century
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Many houses burnt down and a reported 210 human beings and many animals dead
And for those where the fires were tough times are ahead
By the great fires that brought death dreams have been destroyed
And blackened desolation in the burnt countryside
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