Where the Men of Endurance Ride
© Brenda Joy
Winner, 2023 King of the Ranges Bush Poetry Competition, Murrurundi, NSW.
In our Outback land, swept by desert sand
where the bones of the beasts lie bleached,
here the south wind’s wail moans a lonely tale
of a goal that was never reached.
This is where he died, where the bull oaks sighed
and the howl of the dingo mourned,
on the droving trail to the southern rail
where ambitions of men were scorned.
What had brought him here to absorb the fear
that the fire of the camp allays?
Did the cattle bells cast their haunting spells
over saddle-sore weary days?
Had the night-watch song where all dreams belong
lured this drifter to leave his home,
to become a part of Australia’s heart
where the lovers of freedom roam?
We can’t really learn just what made him yearn
to traverse through this wide expanse,
yet the desert speaks to a soul that seeks
like the strains of a lost romance,
for its spirit cries under cobalt skies
that expand over gibber plains...
in the song-line sound of the blood-tinged ground
where the Dreamtime of myths remains...
...in the early dawn of a silent morn
when a palette of pastel tone
paints the wave like sands as the light expands
to the ridge monoliths enthrone...
when the land’s ablaze in the sunset’s rays
as the orb and horizon meet...
when the rising moon brings a heart in tune
with the rhythm of Outback’s beat.
Modern rovers quest in the land out west
for the solitude drovers knew
so as time and means fuel adventure’s schemes
empty places are all too few.
But as season’s chill stirs an eerie thrill
from a resonance deep within,
here a sense of awe, seldom felt before,
permeates through our pit-stop din
I can almost hear in the atmosphere
from the stones where his bones now lie,
that this drover’s free where he loved to be
in his realm of the endless sky.
So we leave him there in the pristine air
to the peace that his spirit’s found
for our wheels intrude on the mystic mood
that exudes from his sacred ground.
Storytellers weave from the threads that leave
them to feel what our forebears faced
and each eulogy is a legacy
to the lives hardy souls embraced.
On Australia’s page, so the droving age
is a part of our nation’s pride.
Though the era’s past, yet the legends last
where the men of endurance ride.
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