I don’t remember granddad
Except for his bag- old leather
Out on the lawn by the path
There many weeks before it went.
I have an old and distant memory
Of a shadowy image in the house
But perhaps I recall the photo, the one
they gave us all as kids.
The one of him and grandma.
A big man from the photo
Sergeant of police no less
Not a man any would forget
Was it perhaps the other grandpa
Mother’s pa, the one who had the bag?
But he is not even a shadow
I have not a glimpse of him at all.
An Inspector of police the first one,
Sergeant in Taree,
And in a dozen other towns
from the Queensland
Grandma I remember well
She’s not far from me now.
Musicians hands I had, she told me
A butcher’s was nearer the mark
They have gone now, both of them
to the big family plot by the river.
With sons and daughters.
Our aunts and uncles, also now long gone
Born in those dozen country towns
The last to go was Edith, Pops we used to call her
All that now remains are us,
And we are going now too.
And when the last of us has gone
We can only hope their names
are not to be forgotten - , George and Ern,
Mabel and Toots, Wanda and the rest.
Twelve of them, over twenty there are of us
And again the ones who follow us. Then theirs again
- Max and Piper, Chris and Josh, Tom and Fleur -
so few – to remember the big man and us all.
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