RED

RED

Maureen Clifford © The Scribbly Bark Poet

There’s a blood red road ‘ neath a blood red moon, winding past the bloodwood trees

and it winds along in its own sweet time and it leads to where it leads.

There’s a plume of dust reaching to the skies as the old Ute bucks and skids

on the gravel road , corrugated deep , a mere track, for goats and kids.

Where the gum tree leaves hanging limp and grey, turn red ‘neath the rising sun

and their coat of dust adds a tinge of rust, left behind on this outback run.

Here the shadows cast by their stark grey boughs seem to almost duck and weave

as the Ute rolls under the dome of sky, that turns red as the moon takes leave.

There’s a taste that mingles with the dust, flavoured by mans despair

for the rains have ceased and there’s no release from the worry or the care.

With the paddocks dry and the stock long gone and the creek just stagnant pools

it’s a bloody shame but this farming game seems is for the rich or fools.

He had done his best, as had all the rest, every leaf they’d overturned.

He had lost the lot, and the gains he’d got, Mother Nature had now spurned.

With a mind confused, nothing else to lose, he had one last hand to play.

There’s a blood red pool, ‘neath a bloodwood tree where a life just ebbs away.