The Bushfire Man Poem by David Lewis Paget

Blue Marue was a flinty soul
Who'd never suffer a fool,
Handy at using his fists, he'd made
A mark at his Junior School,
He only got to the seventh grade
When they kicked him out in the street,
But Blue would challenge their petty rules
By landing square on his feet.

He went to work on the Harbour Bridge,
Belting the rivets home,
And looked with pride at the harbourside
As he stood at the crest, alone,
He browned beneath the Australian sun
And his skin was leather, tanned,
As he earned his chow by the sweat of his brow,
But he loved his native land.

He took to the bush, went shearing
When the jobs were becoming scarce,
Carried his swag on an aching back
And thought that it could have been worse,
The war came on, he enlisted,
And he fought in the desert sands,
Then found himself in a hedgerow in
The last great battle in France.

He marched on home in his uniform
And caught at a Sheila's eye,
A swift romance and they made their plans
And they wed at North Bondi,
It only lasted a year or two
She was not in his social clique,
He was rough, and ready for anything,
She thought she was quite unique.

She soon gave birth to a daughter
And he paid for the girl to grow,
He sent the funds for her schooling
In a Methodists Ladies show,
Her mother filled up her head with thoughts
Above her station in life,
And warned the girl of her father, who
She said had deserted his wife.

While Blue, he went to the Snowy's
Worked on the Snowy Mountain Scheme,
Along with thousands of migrants who
Had all had a similar dream,
To start a life in Australia, far
From the bleak Italian shore,
That lay in a devastation
After the great European War.

He bought a cottage out in the scrub
Where he'd always feel at home,
Far from the crush of the city,
Where his wife would remain, alone,
Their daughter never saw much of him,
Whenever she did, she frowned,
Her nose was up in the air, at times
When she wasn't looking down.

He'd go out fighting the bushfires when
The sun burned hot in the sky,
The temperatures up in the forties
And the timber was tinder dry,
He said he'd like to be buried when
His time had come to leave,
He couldn't stand to be burned, he'd seen
The God of Fire in the trees.

The mother died in the summertime,
The daughter came to stay,
She didn't have any money then,
But she'd rather be away,
Then Blue had fallen, was sinking fast
Like a stooped and gnarled old tree,
He said, I'll leave you the cottage, lass,
As long as you bury me! '

He'd left, he said, the insurance so
She hadn't to pay a thing,
Just get in touch with the broker, girl,
He'll sort out everything,
And then he died on a starlit night
On the porch of his cottage home,
He'd come to the world a fighter, and
He was leaving the world, alone.

She claimed the insurance money, then
She questioned the parlour's son,
‘How much is it for cremation,
If it's cheap, then I'll have it done! '
So Blue Marue in his coffin went
To the Crematorium,
And she sat back, and counted the change
From the total insurance sum.

She slept that night in the cottage,
Lay there, making her future plans,
She'd go straight back to the city,
Once the cottage was off her hands.
But as the hiss of the gas jets flared
And the coffin slid from the bier,
Lightning struck at an old gum tree
And set the tree on fire.

A bushfire is a terrible thing,
It creeps, and leaps, and growls,
It spreads right into a firestorm
And when it does, it howls,
The sky glowed red in the evening sky
As the daughter lay and slept,
She stirred when the flames were in the eaves
Then woke, and screamed, and wept.

The cottage sat in the midst of flame,
The coffin started to burn,
Up in the trees, the God of Fire
Had left her nowhere to turn,
But Blue Marue was a flinty soul
And he bore the flames with ease,
While his daughter ran like a flaming torch,
And perished, down on her knees.

7 January 2013