the child & the tractor

2003

the child and the tractor,
stormboy

A creek near a farm
… a bubbling brook

A Kingfisher

The child and the tractor
The boy climbed up
He liked what he saw
The paddocks in front
The pedal, the floor.
The dogs all barking
The horses all whinny
At the Lord of the farm,
The Tractor-God, Timmy.
The bend took too hard
An almighty crashing
Up there near the pigpen
Long live the King!

A duck-billed platypus
A platypus
is a biological oddity
So rare to find
yet a zoological commodity
Only at night
do they dare to show
And down in the mud
of the bed they go

Downstream to the sea
When down falls the soul
and dark falls the sky,
the nose of the platypus
and other platypi..,
Might nose their way up
and across, downstream,
searching the mud
for all things unseen.
But when they smell
the faint tint and taint
of the land of the gulls,
as in some old and
wisened pelly’s tell,
the platypus knows
he has swome too far.

Back to the gully
and in under trees,
for never does platypus
drift the downstreams.

River through a town
The lights of town
were drugged and drowned
and dragged deep down
to their watery grave.

And all that’s left
Of the town of night
Are sparks that escape
To the surface of sight
in broken of shard,
mere sorry reflections
of the glory of former
of formless suggestions.

The people of the darkened town
losesomely look at the river now
throwing stones from
the bridges of stone
and looking down … they dangle.
And at an angle
they just might see …
they crane their dimly eyes …
their nightclubs and scrapers,
cafes strewn with Autumn leaves,
lover kissing, city-light skies.

No longer now, no light to see.
All has been taken away it seems
All these sights and all the light
was taken by the undertow,
and dragged away, away, so slow
the direction that the ships all go.

Downstream, downstream!
Lighting naught!
it winds its way
into the bay
and stays unseen for crabs to glean.

This beach is too small to skirt the seas
This beach, it be
far too small
to skirt ‘round the sea
But it just might be
enough to skirt
‘round the land
Where we stand
if the land where we be
indeed be surrounded
by sea

The pelican and the boy
Said the pelican to the boy
Where you are headed is no place for me.

Said the boy to the pelican
Indeed.

Said the pelican to the boy
It seems wrought with complexity
and uncertainty
and inconsistency
and incongruity

Said the boy to the pelican
Aye indeed.

Said the pelican to the boy
Where you are headed is no place for me.

Said the boy to the pelican
No indeed, nor me.

Then he turned and headed back to his small
fishing boat
as the waves of the incoming tide
lapped at its side

Driftwood and shell in a glass vase
This beack is far too small
to skirt around the umpteen seas
Drifts of wood
and shells of glass
in vase inside the sunrise shards.
Too small to hold the seas inside
the tip sticks out
for you to see
In drifting, shifting sands of reefs
The once held these lives
Now washed with past.
© Joshua Santospirito 2003