Libby

With Mother Nature Libby lives in harmony She loves the woodland every bush and tree She know the birds she know them by their song The yellow robin, butcherbird and currawong. She says that birds like us not wholly free That bird song is more about territory The kookaburra never laughs for joy But as a warning to his kindred bird nearby. She never had children never was a wife And in her house by the wood she has spent most of her life Three score and ten years on her next birthday Her once brown hair clipped short is silver gray. Her lover Jim died seven years ago From prostrate cancer his end painful and slow They had lived together for close to thirty years And her great sense of loss was washed away in tears. Their great love for Nature was their common bond And on Spring evenings they often walked to gray gum pond Just to watch the little dabchick dive for prey Such happy memories never fade away. By woodland grass margins at the dawn of day She watch the swamp wallabies box and play Before they hop to cover of the trees To hide in undergrowth up to the knees. She recognize each plant that in the woodland grow And about Nature there's not much that she doesn't know She love the wild broom cloaked in their yellow flowers By woodland paths in summer's early hours. The name of every wild thing, bush and tree Is stored away in Libby's memory And she wake each morning at the dawn of day To watch the swamp wallabies box and play.