If stone is what you’re after, you’ve come to the right place.
There’s a quarry and evidence that what’s in it works.
The streets are broad and straight and lined with stone,
The feeling is that people here want things to last.
What’s lasted’s there for all to see. What you can’t see is
Those who’ve left. The young leave early and the old, well,
There’s a place on the edge of town
That has a view, we’re told, to die for.
The church bell still rings; that sweet peal of comfort on a Sunday morning,
While the fire siren wails its frightening song in summer.
Some remember what it’s like to work. The old men talk fondly of the days of wool,
How the big drays would line up in the main street on their way to the brokers,
Loaded to the top with huge bales that made
The fortunes of a fortunate few.
These days, they have jobs in the city and their ancestral pile
Out in the backblocks grows little except Scotch thistles and second mortgages.
Still, you have to keep up appearances.
For the rest of us, the sun rises and sets beyond the Mount
As it always has, but there is talk that old volcano could, one day,
Become active again, about the same
Time the town does, set in stone, as it is.
Poem
About Town
Sharyn Anderson