Police - The Cobber Pedy Miner Poem by Paul Warren

The diagnosis was that he wouldn't live
That the cancer would get him in the end

He had been an opal miner for 20 years
Living in Coober Pedy away from Europe

And all it meant at the end of World War II
When he fought on the Eastern Front

Where he was involved in Nazi slaughter
So he wanted to hide there in the Outback

He didn't have any family and few friends
So he went to his dugout and lay down

A stick of gelignite in his mouth
And the fuse laid along his chest

The fuse was lit and he watched it burn
As the gelignite blew his head off

That is the way the police found him
In a show of manhood he wanted to make.

© Paul Warren Poetry