Here, among foothills, back
There on the common creek
Behind the bucket commerce
Of flower farms, remnant treeferns
Are of old incited into many heads.
It needs, it would be
Down back creeks,
Under a rhubarb farm.
It can be five, six, even
Seven heads, or a haughty nine,
beyond the bulb nurseries.
On their hortatory-cultural
Single butts, split-branched
To rebranch again, in a
Flagrant wild flaring, a royal
Candelabra of green
Flame crowns: the outpouring
Hosanna of its divisions, the undivided
Fronds, an unequaled, rare
Fern fabric, uncurling that
Unknown Garden-nations’ flag.
Out of unheard-of lands, old
As Genesis, tongues of flame green
Are continually unfurling,
A culture grown of the land
Behind this tractored red mud;
That vogueless bog below us
In this overthrown world.
Well beyond our bought
Lawn-bottom beauties is
A genetic blaze out of another
Endangered, ignored land.
In a pocket lapse in the change,
Just a tract of forgotten creek
Lands, a scrap of simplicity
Breaking with candelabras…
Handed on to me or you
Like a religious pamphlet.
28 August 2003 © Wayne David Knoll
Burleigh/East Monbulk, Victora, Australia
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Not Monbulk !
White borders of Green and Yellow Postcard
mailed to my brother’s market-garden farm
frame a rustic-hilled creek-valley scene,
with near other-side horizons, pointed
up with poplar trees.
Descending stairs of hedges, a farm track beyond
unseen fences, pasture daisies in a land of spring,
centre in on corrugated-iron sheds, -a shed
up on posts - a shearing shed - yards and
outbuildings sloping to a weeping
willow creek.
Rising up this side to foreground a
clean-slate of gravel is a modern road
mailed in bitumen, with a roadside verge
mown to the drop-off of phalaris grasses,
besides which a yellow sports car imposes
before an oversize ‘Welcome to MONBULK’
roadsign on two imposts - without perspective
or vanishing points - with this text writ
across a slate of gravel: ‘Take note Mr K…
This Alfa Romeo could be on
its way to Monbulk.'
In for lunch, my primary-producer brother
studies it with a singular eye that estimates,
the other knowing sights of places where
things belong. The straight row plough-line
of a mind scans for sense of place, searches
all district roads, or else who is placed there …
imagining them as they belong till
they are taken to another place.
Only his brow is furrowed now
by the invisible plough
of rowless crops of question
marks. He considers.
Turns the postcard over.
Reads.
“Dear Mr K…, Your eyes
do not deceive you, Mr K…!”
Stops. Flips the picture back in view.
Flips / Reads on. “This Alfa Romeo
Spider could well be on its way
to Monbulk in Victoria.”
Mr K, my inderacine brother, shrugs
as he throws down the post’s rootless
scrap of a card, and sneers:
“That’s not Monbulk!”
4 May 2005 © Wayne David Knoll
The Cascades, Burleigh/East Monbulk
mailed to my brother’s market-garden farm
frame a rustic-hilled creek-valley scene,
with near other-side horizons, pointed
up with poplar trees.
Descending stairs of hedges, a farm track beyond
unseen fences, pasture daisies in a land of spring,
centre in on corrugated-iron sheds, -a shed
up on posts - a shearing shed - yards and
outbuildings sloping to a weeping
willow creek.
Rising up this side to foreground a
clean-slate of gravel is a modern road
mailed in bitumen, with a roadside verge
mown to the drop-off of phalaris grasses,
besides which a yellow sports car imposes
before an oversize ‘Welcome to MONBULK’
roadsign on two imposts - without perspective
or vanishing points - with this text writ
across a slate of gravel: ‘Take note Mr K…
This Alfa Romeo could be on
its way to Monbulk.'
In for lunch, my primary-producer brother
studies it with a singular eye that estimates,
the other knowing sights of places where
things belong. The straight row plough-line
of a mind scans for sense of place, searches
all district roads, or else who is placed there …
imagining them as they belong till
they are taken to another place.
Only his brow is furrowed now
by the invisible plough
of rowless crops of question
marks. He considers.
Turns the postcard over.
Reads.
“Dear Mr K…, Your eyes
do not deceive you, Mr K…!”
Stops. Flips the picture back in view.
Flips / Reads on. “This Alfa Romeo
Spider could well be on its way
to Monbulk in Victoria.”
Mr K, my inderacine brother, shrugs
as he throws down the post’s rootless
scrap of a card, and sneers:
“That’s not Monbulk!”
4 May 2005 © Wayne David Knoll
The Cascades, Burleigh/East Monbulk
Off The Keeper’s Branch
As letter-winged,
As the little kite
posted in wind.
For forty winds,
here was our
three-moon home.
A stacked basket
of gumsticks high
in a messmate tree
till eggs chicked &
fledged off as they
sprung the twig
then the keeper blew
the parents another
stretch of canvas.
When winter storms
shed their old basket-
nest from the branch
each twig stayed put,
tension-sprung as a kite
frame or an aero wing.
The woven vessel
of our true emigration
is not unravelled.
18 June 2004 © Wayne David Knoll
The Cascades, Burleigh/Monbulk, Victoria
As the little kite
posted in wind.
For forty winds,
here was our
three-moon home.
A stacked basket
of gumsticks high
in a messmate tree
till eggs chicked &
fledged off as they
sprung the twig
then the keeper blew
the parents another
stretch of canvas.
When winter storms
shed their old basket-
nest from the branch
each twig stayed put,
tension-sprung as a kite
frame or an aero wing.
The woven vessel
of our true emigration
is not unravelled.
18 June 2004 © Wayne David Knoll
The Cascades, Burleigh/Monbulk, Victoria
Night Vision
Three stars is a sky
socket frame of trees
as it winks its eyelid
into another black
under the dense rim
of tree-black brows.
25 May 2004 © Wayne David Knoll.
The Cascades Stony Creek, Burleigh/Monbulk
socket frame of trees
as it winks its eyelid
into another black
under the dense rim
of tree-black brows.
25 May 2004 © Wayne David Knoll.
The Cascades Stony Creek, Burleigh/Monbulk
Longing For Here
[the world to come is in this one)
Rows of horseradish
leading down red dirt
paths to a creek now a
staircase of spill dams
stepping down eastwards
thru’ chestnut groves,
chinese gooseberries
climbing their trellis,
rip-patched bush, and
hard-won green pockets
of pasture where cows
meander before walls
of overlapping ranges
as gentle-climate blued,
spring-fed mountains
embrace ferntree creeks;
as that day will be on
our reawaking, a scene
of longing for here.
19 Nov 2004 © Wayne David Knoll
(Stony Creek Valley seen from Macclesfield Rd, Monbulk)
Rows of horseradish
leading down red dirt
paths to a creek now a
staircase of spill dams
stepping down eastwards
thru’ chestnut groves,
chinese gooseberries
climbing their trellis,
rip-patched bush, and
hard-won green pockets
of pasture where cows
meander before walls
of overlapping ranges
as gentle-climate blued,
spring-fed mountains
embrace ferntree creeks;
as that day will be on
our reawaking, a scene
of longing for here.
19 Nov 2004 © Wayne David Knoll
(Stony Creek Valley seen from Macclesfield Rd, Monbulk)
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Salt Beans
I loved to work the bean slicer handle
G-clamping the stand to the table-edge
round-turning the spindle of thrift
like chance in a sure election.
When beans could not be sold
when there was a glut of beans
the policy was thrift and human application
in the economy of our own garden
we returned the wealth of the farm
when it was devalued anywhere else.
once, Mum got me to wind the handle
while she pointed beans down the chute
in train, one at a time continuously
as if it was all the one bean which hit
the circling blades and sliced diagonally
to splatter onto the placed tray of place
in careful catch and preservation.
The vegetables were given short shrift
beans emerged as a democracy
cut into bared cross-sections
made common in all its inner stuff
with darker walls of green fibre
around the gel and undone juices
cutting through embryo of half-formed
seeds growing in the pith
The whole body of the beans
was pared into skewed bits
and the packed in the old crock
with a liberal politic of salt
filtering down and stirred
to cover every cut bean surface.
9 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
G-clamping the stand to the table-edge
round-turning the spindle of thrift
like chance in a sure election.
When beans could not be sold
when there was a glut of beans
the policy was thrift and human application
in the economy of our own garden
we returned the wealth of the farm
when it was devalued anywhere else.
once, Mum got me to wind the handle
while she pointed beans down the chute
in train, one at a time continuously
as if it was all the one bean which hit
the circling blades and sliced diagonally
to splatter onto the placed tray of place
in careful catch and preservation.
The vegetables were given short shrift
beans emerged as a democracy
cut into bared cross-sections
made common in all its inner stuff
with darker walls of green fibre
around the gel and undone juices
cutting through embryo of half-formed
seeds growing in the pith
The whole body of the beans
was pared into skewed bits
and the packed in the old crock
with a liberal politic of salt
filtering down and stirred
to cover every cut bean surface.
9 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
Blues For Raspberries
[ or Rain Blues for Raspberries]
Rain! The rain! Unseasonal rain!
The rain comes in December
washing out harvest, an advent water
across allotment farms in our red ranges
full of rain on the berries at picking time
No thanks. We don't need it.
we drip out a fashion,
stiff in wetweather gear,
plastic rainhat, oilskin raincoat,
kneelong gumboots
plastic waterproofs
styled like body nappies
The rain comes like God's sendoff!
It drizzles enough between showers
The fruit is up, but the rain comes down.
We lift our arms to receive the crop
and water runs down our wrists
and drips out the cloth on our elbows.
Above the unmoppable mud
the canes a thick with showers
dripping juices into our hair
our sleeves dribble like house gutters
our feet slip around like mops
unable to get clean
Soft fruit, soft earth, soft flesh
Softened in the continuous baptism
Of soaking rain, the foliage is a river,
Drips fall from our ears, lobes glisten
eyebrows are covered in fine dew
and noses cling to a drop of silver
We pick over the mouldering
with wet sleeves, In wet coats
and bobby-hats, Oilskins sopping .
Our arms as pink as babies from the bath
Our legs as soft as boyhood genitals
the soft fruit slumps unfelt between
the soft sponges of our fingers
water-softened berries shake free
each touch sends a scatter down
for fruit stems have gone soggy
in lukewarm summer rain.
Our wooden punnet carriers are dumb
leaden with clay, stuck with
sod biscuits underneath, becoming cakes,
the punnets are swollen and sodden
the weight on youthful shoulders is heavy,
raincoats weigh double, our gumboots
are boats of mud, puntwide,
outriggered with loaves of mud.
We trudge through the yeast
of our own cultivation, but in
a trial of unrising red dough
all uplift is on us
with no pickerswho freely come
Every complaint is soundproofed
in the sponging of the earth...
Every pluck is doubtful,
even red fruit is pale pink,
select berries rot in punnets,
ten days with no let-up,
we can't wait for stopping of rain
this is all our year's crop...
Just us family hands, farm children
too few to get the pick off,
we work wet, on in the wet,
work ripe for wet
farm children like produce ourselves
we plod on where dust turned to slurry,
now tractor skid, the truck would slide away,
we must carry, carry on.
The tractor slides on the slip-hills,
we must carry on, carry up all we pick
punnets are yoked to our bones
we flounder around in the slips
we take up berries in rain-jam
like fruits ourselves, washed-out
pale for the market
but still paid, those peace rates
that slew off to a pittance
In the rain that weighs down the tally
is my birthday... It was my birthday!
and then in a three days it is Christmas
so the raspberries can
fall to waste... we'll make
no attempt to pick for
just one rainy day.
29 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
Rain! The rain! Unseasonal rain!
The rain comes in December
washing out harvest, an advent water
across allotment farms in our red ranges
full of rain on the berries at picking time
No thanks. We don't need it.
we drip out a fashion,
stiff in wetweather gear,
plastic rainhat, oilskin raincoat,
kneelong gumboots
plastic waterproofs
styled like body nappies
The rain comes like God's sendoff!
It drizzles enough between showers
The fruit is up, but the rain comes down.
We lift our arms to receive the crop
and water runs down our wrists
and drips out the cloth on our elbows.
Above the unmoppable mud
the canes a thick with showers
dripping juices into our hair
our sleeves dribble like house gutters
our feet slip around like mops
unable to get clean
Soft fruit, soft earth, soft flesh
Softened in the continuous baptism
Of soaking rain, the foliage is a river,
Drips fall from our ears, lobes glisten
eyebrows are covered in fine dew
and noses cling to a drop of silver
We pick over the mouldering
with wet sleeves, In wet coats
and bobby-hats, Oilskins sopping .
Our arms as pink as babies from the bath
Our legs as soft as boyhood genitals
the soft fruit slumps unfelt between
the soft sponges of our fingers
water-softened berries shake free
each touch sends a scatter down
for fruit stems have gone soggy
in lukewarm summer rain.
Our wooden punnet carriers are dumb
leaden with clay, stuck with
sod biscuits underneath, becoming cakes,
the punnets are swollen and sodden
the weight on youthful shoulders is heavy,
raincoats weigh double, our gumboots
are boats of mud, puntwide,
outriggered with loaves of mud.
We trudge through the yeast
of our own cultivation, but in
a trial of unrising red dough
all uplift is on us
with no pickerswho freely come
Every complaint is soundproofed
in the sponging of the earth...
Every pluck is doubtful,
even red fruit is pale pink,
select berries rot in punnets,
ten days with no let-up,
we can't wait for stopping of rain
this is all our year's crop...
Just us family hands, farm children
too few to get the pick off,
we work wet, on in the wet,
work ripe for wet
farm children like produce ourselves
we plod on where dust turned to slurry,
now tractor skid, the truck would slide away,
we must carry, carry on.
The tractor slides on the slip-hills,
we must carry on, carry up all we pick
punnets are yoked to our bones
we flounder around in the slips
we take up berries in rain-jam
like fruits ourselves, washed-out
pale for the market
but still paid, those peace rates
that slew off to a pittance
In the rain that weighs down the tally
is my birthday... It was my birthday!
and then in a three days it is Christmas
so the raspberries can
fall to waste... we'll make
no attempt to pick for
just one rainy day.
29 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
The Taboo of Happiness in the Butcher
[ butcher ]
The Monbulk butcher delivered
on Tuesdays & Friday afternoons and often
we panted after the mile up from school just to be there
for him coming to the door with his 'Ooroo Ooh' and in
to the counter of the kitchen mealtable
where tradesmen were received as us.
There then, we warmed to the jovial blood-soak
on the white butchers paper which doubled weekly
to wrap his parcel like a simple gift, -same as the palaver
he went on with, saying how big, how substantial,
amply tousling infant brother Russell's top
curls like the furred hide on a Hereford bull calf
The butcher was the happiest of comers.
There must be something about the red meat
that made for a little air of celebration
as if our every mutton and two-tooth
was a victory, and quite some catch.
Usual fare was forequarter chops, mince steak,
silverside, sausage mince each fortnight Sunday
ox tail, a leg of mutton for Saturday dinner
sausages, soup bones in winter and dog cake.
Butcher came like a planet in orbit; we were
delivered, a delivery which we set occasions upon,
for our days dragged out, rooted, but routineless
except for the shepherd-like visits of the butcher
who revealed another world through meat
which no knife did in vegetable or plant
HortiCulture can make you squeamish!
Like Cain, was that why he regretted Abel?
When I was about seven the butcher came
to the fridgeless shed instead of to the house;
to secret doings with a paddock beast in the yard
but my brother Melvyn knew:
'He's killing the bull calf!'
He and I hung about as close as we could get
but we were not allowed to watch the slaughter
as if that happiness the butcher delivered
was a thing only adults could see in the flesh.
11 December 1996-March 1997 © Wayne David Knoll
The Monbulk butcher delivered
on Tuesdays & Friday afternoons and often
we panted after the mile up from school just to be there
for him coming to the door with his 'Ooroo Ooh' and in
to the counter of the kitchen mealtable
where tradesmen were received as us.
There then, we warmed to the jovial blood-soak
on the white butchers paper which doubled weekly
to wrap his parcel like a simple gift, -same as the palaver
he went on with, saying how big, how substantial,
amply tousling infant brother Russell's top
curls like the furred hide on a Hereford bull calf
The butcher was the happiest of comers.
There must be something about the red meat
that made for a little air of celebration
as if our every mutton and two-tooth
was a victory, and quite some catch.
Usual fare was forequarter chops, mince steak,
silverside, sausage mince each fortnight Sunday
ox tail, a leg of mutton for Saturday dinner
sausages, soup bones in winter and dog cake.
Butcher came like a planet in orbit; we were
delivered, a delivery which we set occasions upon,
for our days dragged out, rooted, but routineless
except for the shepherd-like visits of the butcher
who revealed another world through meat
which no knife did in vegetable or plant
HortiCulture can make you squeamish!
Like Cain, was that why he regretted Abel?
When I was about seven the butcher came
to the fridgeless shed instead of to the house;
to secret doings with a paddock beast in the yard
but my brother Melvyn knew:
'He's killing the bull calf!'
He and I hung about as close as we could get
but we were not allowed to watch the slaughter
as if that happiness the butcher delivered
was a thing only adults could see in the flesh.
11 December 1996-March 1997 © Wayne David Knoll
Rank Roots; acanthus
(or Rankled Roots )
Under the old red cherry plums old acanthus plants keep
growing next to thread belts of NZ ‘Settler's’ Flax, as if
to decry this life: a sort of bear's breeches with deep fingers
falling to white fleshy roots off our introduced Caucasian radix.
The word-root is as spiced with buried forerunners
as our garden was at odd times with radishes;
as I now quest back to grimaced tastebuds of childhood
to eradicate ills in radical investigativeness.
It is always a chore to unearth the truth
of things firmly rooted to their source
for the sorrow and trouble of life
gives spiritual diseases a force.
What might seem lazy to the battlers -who often
in emotional sloth make a virtue of physical work
is really the hardest of tasks, - to get to
the bottom of our story - no delve can be shirked.
Now this is my one Classic, para-Homeric, allusion:
this leaf of the weedy old sinner, sap-stinking acanthus;
once was a pattern bound for glory, on civilized stone,
still found on capitals of carved columns in Corinth.
Corinthians we knew on the farm from the first and second
letters of Paul, while the pagan Greeks of ‘literati biblios’
were unsung among us, we had them in black books as hellions,
if we heard of them, who read Paul mostly out of all the Bible.
Though Paul was read for cut and thrust, it's gets ugly
there was no passion for the graced wisdom of past kind
for eye has not seen the beauty, nor has ear heard,
nor has it dawned on a set-sun of sheer mind
what God has prepared for those who love him,
even old acanthus, as it was known in the godtypes
of creation, like a spreading open hand-form in the maze
where the One touching base slowly redeems us of gripes
because his Spirit probes everything,
it is radically odd
digging up stuff,
even the depths of God,
the whole language of suffering
rooted in the wood of cross
is still nonsense to those that can't see
the bush from the bush where they are lost.
As teens, I tried to dig out the blind plant,
to consign acanthus to History
but the roots spread all over the place
like cancerous lymph nodes of a body
much as I and brothers removed joints,
rooted flesh out of our ground,
acanthus regrew, sprouted leaves
off tiny white rootfingers, we found
it might need years of pain,
perseverance and then a lucky grace
to get all the bits, each root
would grow, to tell every trace.
So the acanthus is still there, a dark life,
as if it thrives on ignorance and neglect;
So vigorous, with deep hands of vegetative fingers,
that it’s meaning, like its heart, is hard to detect.
When once-unfashionable acanthus came back in,
-the fashion- for no-maintenance had popularity
for pleasure gardens, and in park showpieces -
people decided to plant acanthus again in their city
Then I dug acanthus out of a rented place on the Yarra
to homegrow carrots as an alternative feature
and sold an awkward trailerload of cropped roots wholesale
to my childhood Sunday-School nurseryman-teacher.
And he sold them, like temptation, to the impulse-fingered
motif-consumer ease-buys of the unflagging Melbourne lot,
by the ten-thousands, - the roots subdivided into plantlets
In Coles department stores, in racks of leafy plastic pots.
12 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
Under the old red cherry plums old acanthus plants keep
growing next to thread belts of NZ ‘Settler's’ Flax, as if
to decry this life: a sort of bear's breeches with deep fingers
falling to white fleshy roots off our introduced Caucasian radix.
The word-root is as spiced with buried forerunners
as our garden was at odd times with radishes;
as I now quest back to grimaced tastebuds of childhood
to eradicate ills in radical investigativeness.
It is always a chore to unearth the truth
of things firmly rooted to their source
for the sorrow and trouble of life
gives spiritual diseases a force.
What might seem lazy to the battlers -who often
in emotional sloth make a virtue of physical work
is really the hardest of tasks, - to get to
the bottom of our story - no delve can be shirked.
Now this is my one Classic, para-Homeric, allusion:
this leaf of the weedy old sinner, sap-stinking acanthus;
once was a pattern bound for glory, on civilized stone,
still found on capitals of carved columns in Corinth.
Corinthians we knew on the farm from the first and second
letters of Paul, while the pagan Greeks of ‘literati biblios’
were unsung among us, we had them in black books as hellions,
if we heard of them, who read Paul mostly out of all the Bible.
Though Paul was read for cut and thrust, it's gets ugly
there was no passion for the graced wisdom of past kind
for eye has not seen the beauty, nor has ear heard,
nor has it dawned on a set-sun of sheer mind
what God has prepared for those who love him,
even old acanthus, as it was known in the godtypes
of creation, like a spreading open hand-form in the maze
where the One touching base slowly redeems us of gripes
because his Spirit probes everything,
it is radically odd
digging up stuff,
even the depths of God,
the whole language of suffering
rooted in the wood of cross
is still nonsense to those that can't see
the bush from the bush where they are lost.
As teens, I tried to dig out the blind plant,
to consign acanthus to History
but the roots spread all over the place
like cancerous lymph nodes of a body
much as I and brothers removed joints,
rooted flesh out of our ground,
acanthus regrew, sprouted leaves
off tiny white rootfingers, we found
it might need years of pain,
perseverance and then a lucky grace
to get all the bits, each root
would grow, to tell every trace.
So the acanthus is still there, a dark life,
as if it thrives on ignorance and neglect;
So vigorous, with deep hands of vegetative fingers,
that it’s meaning, like its heart, is hard to detect.
When once-unfashionable acanthus came back in,
-the fashion- for no-maintenance had popularity
for pleasure gardens, and in park showpieces -
people decided to plant acanthus again in their city
Then I dug acanthus out of a rented place on the Yarra
to homegrow carrots as an alternative feature
and sold an awkward trailerload of cropped roots wholesale
to my childhood Sunday-School nurseryman-teacher.
And he sold them, like temptation, to the impulse-fingered
motif-consumer ease-buys of the unflagging Melbourne lot,
by the ten-thousands, - the roots subdivided into plantlets
In Coles department stores, in racks of leafy plastic pots.
12 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
Draw Bar
Ferguson,
as if one of our own pioneers,
made the best Draw Bar to go
between linkage arms.
Untarnishable.
They made better steel
back then.
The draw bar is said
to have been made in the
primitive but true carboning of those
wood-charcoal smelters !
where the oak carbons
and elemental traces
get in to give a special
resilient temper to the metal.
They were:
Hard without
being too brittle,
Flexible without
too much spring.
The drawbar grew mercury-black,
shiny with use.
It never rusted -though it
wasn't galvanised.
The draw bar was
indestructible,
invincible.
No lift would bend it.
It would bear up
under any load.
No shock
would crack it
and it had nine
press-drawn bolt-holes
to choose from between its tempered ends
like a wiried man with
as many skills.
A drawbar could
lay about the farmyard unused
for half a year and then be as good
for use the minute you needed it
-if you could find it that is,
the hunt was on, did you see it last
in the spud-box heap, or out in the rain
with the trailers?
Whatever! as you left it, it will be
reliable once its found.
Like a land-man's will
forged of nine-year hopes
laid on the double.
It was the one thing among
a thousand tools
and implements around the farm
which never broke down, never
gave any trouble, more willing
than house bearers,
truer than the land...
Like a gospel fig tree,
like your own limb, like you
expected your own self to be,
a drawbar had holes at both ends
for lynch pins
or home-made wire-clips,
it would bear,
(once you'd pinned it down)
and bear, and what's more
bear more than your own shoulders,
which always surprises.
A drawbar would do
the job perfectly,
draw any load you thought up
in your need
whichever way you
lead it to go.
2 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
Goulburn, NSW
as if one of our own pioneers,
made the best Draw Bar to go
between linkage arms.
Untarnishable.
They made better steel
back then.
The draw bar is said
to have been made in the
primitive but true carboning of those
wood-charcoal smelters !
where the oak carbons
and elemental traces
get in to give a special
resilient temper to the metal.
They were:
Hard without
being too brittle,
Flexible without
too much spring.
The drawbar grew mercury-black,
shiny with use.
It never rusted -though it
wasn't galvanised.
The draw bar was
indestructible,
invincible.
No lift would bend it.
It would bear up
under any load.
No shock
would crack it
and it had nine
press-drawn bolt-holes
to choose from between its tempered ends
like a wiried man with
as many skills.
A drawbar could
lay about the farmyard unused
for half a year and then be as good
for use the minute you needed it
-if you could find it that is,
the hunt was on, did you see it last
in the spud-box heap, or out in the rain
with the trailers?
Whatever! as you left it, it will be
reliable once its found.
Like a land-man's will
forged of nine-year hopes
laid on the double.
It was the one thing among
a thousand tools
and implements around the farm
which never broke down, never
gave any trouble, more willing
than house bearers,
truer than the land...
Like a gospel fig tree,
like your own limb, like you
expected your own self to be,
a drawbar had holes at both ends
for lynch pins
or home-made wire-clips,
it would bear,
(once you'd pinned it down)
and bear, and what's more
bear more than your own shoulders,
which always surprises.
A drawbar would do
the job perfectly,
draw any load you thought up
in your need
whichever way you
lead it to go.
2 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
Goulburn, NSW
self-sown yellow cherry plum
The self-sown tree grew just six inches outside
the farm front gate, produced sweet yellow cherry
plums, and jam quality fruit, late enough to pot with
last raspberries, or the gleanings off the boysens
One day passing Petersen boys climbed the tree,
took free with them, picked a belly full
but when discovered, we hounded them off!
Mum ordered them off as if we owned them.
Wild yellow plums were our poorman's cherries
ripe enough for stewing or jam conserve recipes
Mum would not have us seen to be craven
not even over a few wild yellow plums.
She strung us up ladders to strip plums our way
She would have us reap where she did not sow,
She picked up where she did not put down
like the Kingdom of Heaven was ours.
Afterwards, when we were too busy, it
was starlings would peck the plums down
And the few missed would ripen orange
And fall like gleanings for the worms.
28 November 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
the farm front gate, produced sweet yellow cherry
plums, and jam quality fruit, late enough to pot with
last raspberries, or the gleanings off the boysens
One day passing Petersen boys climbed the tree,
took free with them, picked a belly full
but when discovered, we hounded them off!
Mum ordered them off as if we owned them.
Wild yellow plums were our poorman's cherries
ripe enough for stewing or jam conserve recipes
Mum would not have us seen to be craven
not even over a few wild yellow plums.
She strung us up ladders to strip plums our way
She would have us reap where she did not sow,
She picked up where she did not put down
like the Kingdom of Heaven was ours.
Afterwards, when we were too busy, it
was starlings would peck the plums down
And the few missed would ripen orange
And fall like gleanings for the worms.
28 November 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
Three Point Linkage
We forge deeper
links as we share in pain.
Mischance brings us together
best. Like unasked wildfire,
we respond to our human limits
by a call for help
and find ourselves,
with brothers,
sisters thankful
for our existence...
Don’t say there is no help
to be had in going alone?
For don’t we like to pin
ourselves on, to do it all
proud and by ourselves,
where -as long as we have the tractor
-that enabling machine
with its three point linkage
we are convinced that we
are triangulated,
solid as a Trinity.
Melvyn, my older brother,
was deft with tools,
with machines and things.
Implements were extensions
of his own arms and legs.
He grew up on the tractor, so
his limbs shaped and stretched
first to reach clutch and hoist
and then both of the independent brakes,
and he it made him seem wrought
as steel, tough, impregnable.
The tough was okay until
the day he tried to use both
his arms for lifting a pine stump as well
as to move the hoist arm.
The weight rolled forward
so he had gotten in,
standing between the scoop,
inside the tractor’s three point linkage,
which, coming up, tipped the stump
so he needed both his own arms
to stop it falling over on him.
That hoist, in the cage
of its stay-barred linkage arms,
fused my brother's legs into the vices
of the housing, and drafted proud him in
its hydraulic hug, even then
he bore his independence as silence
till it burst out blue murder.
Then, gripped three ways
he implemented a thing beneath
his pride, a animated out full
of wretched humble human feeling
to a violent plea: a fork of Yeouw!
breaking into the sturm and drang..,
that brought lightning
so it only split
part of a second for me
to move my butt,
to reach the lever,
to give an arm,
to lend the hand he didn’t have,
to throw the hoist lever
that released him, back
to his choice about humanity.
But it was the steel
of the three point linkage
that left him with
proud bruises as a boast.
20 November 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
St Joseph’s House of Prayer, Goulburn, NSW
links as we share in pain.
Mischance brings us together
best. Like unasked wildfire,
we respond to our human limits
by a call for help
and find ourselves,
with brothers,
sisters thankful
for our existence...
Don’t say there is no help
to be had in going alone?
For don’t we like to pin
ourselves on, to do it all
proud and by ourselves,
where -as long as we have the tractor
-that enabling machine
with its three point linkage
we are convinced that we
are triangulated,
solid as a Trinity.
Melvyn, my older brother,
was deft with tools,
with machines and things.
Implements were extensions
of his own arms and legs.
He grew up on the tractor, so
his limbs shaped and stretched
first to reach clutch and hoist
and then both of the independent brakes,
and he it made him seem wrought
as steel, tough, impregnable.
The tough was okay until
the day he tried to use both
his arms for lifting a pine stump as well
as to move the hoist arm.
The weight rolled forward
so he had gotten in,
standing between the scoop,
inside the tractor’s three point linkage,
which, coming up, tipped the stump
so he needed both his own arms
to stop it falling over on him.
That hoist, in the cage
of its stay-barred linkage arms,
fused my brother's legs into the vices
of the housing, and drafted proud him in
its hydraulic hug, even then
he bore his independence as silence
till it burst out blue murder.
Then, gripped three ways
he implemented a thing beneath
his pride, a animated out full
of wretched humble human feeling
to a violent plea: a fork of Yeouw!
breaking into the sturm and drang..,
that brought lightning
so it only split
part of a second for me
to move my butt,
to reach the lever,
to give an arm,
to lend the hand he didn’t have,
to throw the hoist lever
that released him, back
to his choice about humanity.
But it was the steel
of the three point linkage
that left him with
proud bruises as a boast.
20 November 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
St Joseph’s House of Prayer, Goulburn, NSW
The Bonnet of Achilles
[ Breasting The Mountain ]
['Hazeldene,' Stony Creek, Burleigh, South Silvan, Circa 1965]
A heavy paddock-trailer
was filled to three potato tons,
so Dad wanted us boys
as strong hands, help raised
up the pinch-steeps of
a ridden mountainside;
and that long trailer
on a short tractor was
our loaded gun-drawbar ride.
As the weight on the back
of the tractor was great
Dad got us to sit
out on the bonnet
where our weight
could counter the scale
of the load and stop
the front mounting up.
Any thought
of the danger gave
it prestige, was
laughed into the thrill !
we loved to tease risk...
And we knew our own from
a stranger when anyone
said: "You'll be killed."
Often two abreast, we rode
that firing engine helmet
double-banked, kicking up
out in brisk weathers,
and did as wants asked,
on a brink,
too dare-sprited to rankle;
willing, unthanked,
we’d hazard fate,
even fight to be up-on-it,
bronko dinked
like adventurous Achilles,
holding on just
by the bonnet grip
of our ankles.
13 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
['Hazeldene,' Stony Creek, Burleigh, South Silvan, Circa 1965]
A heavy paddock-trailer
was filled to three potato tons,
so Dad wanted us boys
as strong hands, help raised
up the pinch-steeps of
a ridden mountainside;
and that long trailer
on a short tractor was
our loaded gun-drawbar ride.
As the weight on the back
of the tractor was great
Dad got us to sit
out on the bonnet
where our weight
could counter the scale
of the load and stop
the front mounting up.
Any thought
of the danger gave
it prestige, was
laughed into the thrill !
we loved to tease risk...
And we knew our own from
a stranger when anyone
said: "You'll be killed."
Often two abreast, we rode
that firing engine helmet
double-banked, kicking up
out in brisk weathers,
and did as wants asked,
on a brink,
too dare-sprited to rankle;
willing, unthanked,
we’d hazard fate,
even fight to be up-on-it,
bronko dinked
like adventurous Achilles,
holding on just
by the bonnet grip
of our ankles.
13 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
Dipping
( the rite of dipping )
The red mixture was brewed
in two old cut-in-half forty-fours
which had round stainless-steel baskets
specially made
to just slide out and in.
You had to three quarters fill a basket
at a time. It took two and half cases,
- a hundred and twenty pound.
So it took a good heave
to lift it into the drum where
you let it soak for several minutes,
then an even bigger heave
was needed to haul it out,
wet and heavy. You had to skew it
across the rim, caught there so it
drained the costly skirmish
of chemicals for germ-war back
in for the next basketful of spuds.
We dipped spuds by the racks
in the boundary pines deep shade.
In early Spring it was most always
still wintry, no sunshine got in,
and if a South wind blew
it vented in below the dense foliage.
The chill factor was below zero,
our knuckles grew white
despite the red drench, even
inside our rubber gloves. Dipping
spuds was like a sled ride i
n the Antarctic -we gripped the sides
to keep ourselves aloft, heaved
cases of bulk potatoes to keep
circulation up and waited for chemistry
to sink in, as if in cold blood,
like waiting for the end of the world,
or for death to happen!
You could really never say we completely
believed in this costly chemistry.
We knew to be careful how we plunged
the seed potatoes in
For splashes were just as likely to get us
... and in the eyes.
The solution was no panacea,
but Dad sometimes did rebaptise.
It was full immersion, protected
by a prayer the rubbergloves were.
We knew of Dupont, Ceba Geigy and ICI,
like peasants know their aristocracy.
Anyway, their aristocratic jewels might
seem more than crystals of white sugar,
but they were no sugardaddies for us.
For there was Mum who resented Dad
using any chemistry except her own.
So we just used the products Dad
decided we couldn't do without.
He was just holy dipping, take
the most needful war-icides and saving.
The dip cleansed, stopped the rot,
submerged a doubtful pedigree
in the strong force.
Once the spuds had drained you had to
tip their bulk out on the wirenetting racks,
go through the dip process again.
It was constant as a chorus, as the printed page
hardly ever is, a repetition as mnemonic
as of the Lord’s prayer, the memory
of the manual work got in,
like school poems hardly ever did,
like bible verses were supposed to
with each memory text in Sunday school:
Give us this day our small potatoes.”
But we, proudly, had no ritual in our religion.
Our rote was learning the manual rite!
Ritual was a part of the chemistry
in every sentence of a working life.
3 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
The red mixture was brewed
in two old cut-in-half forty-fours
which had round stainless-steel baskets
specially made
to just slide out and in.
You had to three quarters fill a basket
at a time. It took two and half cases,
- a hundred and twenty pound.
So it took a good heave
to lift it into the drum where
you let it soak for several minutes,
then an even bigger heave
was needed to haul it out,
wet and heavy. You had to skew it
across the rim, caught there so it
drained the costly skirmish
of chemicals for germ-war back
in for the next basketful of spuds.
We dipped spuds by the racks
in the boundary pines deep shade.
In early Spring it was most always
still wintry, no sunshine got in,
and if a South wind blew
it vented in below the dense foliage.
The chill factor was below zero,
our knuckles grew white
despite the red drench, even
inside our rubber gloves. Dipping
spuds was like a sled ride i
n the Antarctic -we gripped the sides
to keep ourselves aloft, heaved
cases of bulk potatoes to keep
circulation up and waited for chemistry
to sink in, as if in cold blood,
like waiting for the end of the world,
or for death to happen!
You could really never say we completely
believed in this costly chemistry.
We knew to be careful how we plunged
the seed potatoes in
For splashes were just as likely to get us
... and in the eyes.
The solution was no panacea,
but Dad sometimes did rebaptise.
It was full immersion, protected
by a prayer the rubbergloves were.
We knew of Dupont, Ceba Geigy and ICI,
like peasants know their aristocracy.
Anyway, their aristocratic jewels might
seem more than crystals of white sugar,
but they were no sugardaddies for us.
For there was Mum who resented Dad
using any chemistry except her own.
So we just used the products Dad
decided we couldn't do without.
He was just holy dipping, take
the most needful war-icides and saving.
The dip cleansed, stopped the rot,
submerged a doubtful pedigree
in the strong force.
Once the spuds had drained you had to
tip their bulk out on the wirenetting racks,
go through the dip process again.
It was constant as a chorus, as the printed page
hardly ever is, a repetition as mnemonic
as of the Lord’s prayer, the memory
of the manual work got in,
like school poems hardly ever did,
like bible verses were supposed to
with each memory text in Sunday school:
Give us this day our small potatoes.”
But we, proudly, had no ritual in our religion.
Our rote was learning the manual rite!
Ritual was a part of the chemistry
in every sentence of a working life.
3 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
Grass
grass
We had grass we'd laugh
to name garden, grass
we'd split sides to call lawn
Before white noise!
Before motormowers!
After the once a year cut
As little grass as we could.
Because Dad had to scythe it
Before it dried off, for fires.
But the rest of time, grass:
we were among it lank hours.
Long in its arches and bows.
before we got careful
ere trim looks made us
we had Grass.
10 Dec 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
We had grass we'd laugh
to name garden, grass
we'd split sides to call lawn
Before white noise!
Before motormowers!
After the once a year cut
As little grass as we could.
Because Dad had to scythe it
Before it dried off, for fires.
But the rest of time, grass:
we were among it lank hours.
Long in its arches and bows.
before we got careful
ere trim looks made us
we had Grass.
10 Dec 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
The Genesis Engine
An Iron Heap, a Roofing Heap, a Timber
Pile. Old family farms are the Makings:
equipment yards, heritage recyclers, rare
hardware stores. What seems broadly to be
junk to quarter-acre eyes, are in the slower
longer, wider scheme: precious materials -
especially in those beyond-Season seeing
eyes of the sky-watching grounded man.
Our farm had an Iron Heap under the Cypress
Trees where machine or tool in disuse was thrown
for a chance to be the stuff of new matters
despite its glitzless shop window of surface rust.
There was a Rudge-Multi motorbike frame,
old harrow leaves, coulters, tynes, discs,
and soil slicers, a hand-operated chaff cutter.
Re-used horse-drawn scarifiers became
a linkage cultivator implement, harrow
leaves, welded to a frame made a raisable
three point linkage tool, old fuel drums
became a swim-raft on the dam, or else
when it came to a heavier fabricated sort,
welded end on end to make the drum barrel
of an automated carrot or potato washer
rolling on Vanguard car-wheels, rigged on
welded irrigation pipes and driven by
an added electric motor through a car
diff and gearbox, thus saving thousands.
An old truck chassis became a roof
truss strong enough to hold up a water
tank. Old brick bats were cemented
round a rust-holed corrugated iron
tank to make a brick reservoir with
a watertight seal. There was no GST
on these materials and no income tax
on the money saved, nor an Assets Tax
on the nous or creativity which turned
scrap into the constructive, work into
play -as miraculous as water into wine.
Us farm boys rigged up a full size car
held together by friction, gravity and early science,
made from four vintage Sunbeam spoke-wheels
down to the hubs, with farm pipes for axles
and an old truck-coach divan as seat, a
steering wheel off a cultivator, a gearstick
off a scoop, and on this we drove far, unmoved
as farmers touring the teleports of sky, with
an outrigger of a temporary conflicting brother
still in our convoy on the Rudge Multi,
staked up to earth and handle-barred
to make adventure on a tour we took
into thin geography under the far-horizoned
cloud edge, workless roads were discovered
with no tolls, just our sound-effects in passing,
a zoom on the wind in each driver’s telling,
as the ready Image of its human fuel
in the old tempered spirit-steel
of its Genesis Engine came free.
Feb 2006 © Wayne David Knoll -
The Cascades’ East Monbulk, Victoria
Pile. Old family farms are the Makings:
equipment yards, heritage recyclers, rare
hardware stores. What seems broadly to be
junk to quarter-acre eyes, are in the slower
longer, wider scheme: precious materials -
especially in those beyond-Season seeing
eyes of the sky-watching grounded man.
Our farm had an Iron Heap under the Cypress
Trees where machine or tool in disuse was thrown
for a chance to be the stuff of new matters
despite its glitzless shop window of surface rust.
There was a Rudge-Multi motorbike frame,
old harrow leaves, coulters, tynes, discs,
and soil slicers, a hand-operated chaff cutter.
Re-used horse-drawn scarifiers became
a linkage cultivator implement, harrow
leaves, welded to a frame made a raisable
three point linkage tool, old fuel drums
became a swim-raft on the dam, or else
when it came to a heavier fabricated sort,
welded end on end to make the drum barrel
of an automated carrot or potato washer
rolling on Vanguard car-wheels, rigged on
welded irrigation pipes and driven by
an added electric motor through a car
diff and gearbox, thus saving thousands.
An old truck chassis became a roof
truss strong enough to hold up a water
tank. Old brick bats were cemented
round a rust-holed corrugated iron
tank to make a brick reservoir with
a watertight seal. There was no GST
on these materials and no income tax
on the money saved, nor an Assets Tax
on the nous or creativity which turned
scrap into the constructive, work into
play -as miraculous as water into wine.
Us farm boys rigged up a full size car
held together by friction, gravity and early science,
made from four vintage Sunbeam spoke-wheels
down to the hubs, with farm pipes for axles
and an old truck-coach divan as seat, a
steering wheel off a cultivator, a gearstick
off a scoop, and on this we drove far, unmoved
as farmers touring the teleports of sky, with
an outrigger of a temporary conflicting brother
still in our convoy on the Rudge Multi,
staked up to earth and handle-barred
to make adventure on a tour we took
into thin geography under the far-horizoned
cloud edge, workless roads were discovered
with no tolls, just our sound-effects in passing,
a zoom on the wind in each driver’s telling,
as the ready Image of its human fuel
in the old tempered spirit-steel
of its Genesis Engine came free.
Feb 2006 © Wayne David Knoll -
The Cascades’ East Monbulk, Victoria
dry well
1. Something will have to be got out of it one day....
There was a pocket handkerchief patch
of grey soil, in the bend of the farm drive,
beside where the new thornless youngberries
went in later. That bit of grey soil was hotter
than the red as grey soil reflected heat.
In summer we grew home tomatoes there
-to ripen better, Or staggered brussels sprouts
for warmer winters.
When I was little I'd water tomatoes or pick
sprouts nearby five fenceposts laid flat,
across the top of a dark hole. Dad said
it was The Well which his father, our Grandad,
Karl Allan Knoll dug, believing that, of all
our hilltop only grey-soil would hold water
[for the normal red soil was self-mulching
so porous, water just sponged away].
But we didn't water tomatoes from the well.
There were pipes and hoses force-pumped
before then. The supply was a creek-dam
right down the bottom of the farm
over the hill.
Times when a man would want
to have a well on top of the hill seemed lost
in archaic perverseness.
But like that darkness going down into
the earth it drew our curiosity.
Like a dead bird would, or like horror story.
It made us want an unknown,
some absence where there should be earth.
The airy darkness going down below
the light chinks, had us imagining all sorts,
unbeings, hair-raising shadows.
We asked Daddy if we could look in,
then, when he pulled back the posts
that made a cover, we lay on grey soil
and nosed down into musty nothing.
Dry and empty, except for
a frog on the bottom.
Dead leaves. Dug abandon!
The Well was useless when needed.
Red porous soil cupped that grey
pocket, breaking gritty sieves
in its impervious membrane. Water rose
with the groundwater-table in winter
and spring, and sunk to nought come the dry. '
We need to fill it in,' Dad said. 'It's dangerous.
The cow might break a leg! Something
will have to be got out of it one day.'
2. Something seemed to be wasted.
What had been for Grandad a source
of inspiration enough for him to dig was,
by course, for Dad a waste of time,
a goose chase, a fool's black hole.
There was no quench or draught
to be found in his father's well.
It was a diminishing source,
a withering spring, where there
should have been flow.
Something seemed to be wasted in
all that work, suffering, and life
gone astray.
The Divining Rod Grandad allowed
himself for importance across earth
was given a little tug. There was water
below, but by heaven was it enough?
A divining rod twitches for us, like
a source in the depths of a heart,
but the 'dig' was after-wards
for Dad as bitter as for poor Burke
at Cooper's Creek, and likewise,
in reactive parches, it wasn't lack
of water which sent life dry.
The well, that false start for Grandad,
who hoped he divined a source where
his sons and daughters might drink
and be satisfied, and was my father's bane;
became, for us boys, a source of revelation,
an opened window into the depths which
showed where a story was, allowed a way
through to that empty vessel below
the surface of the earth, in truth,
a draught of unsung mystery beneath.
Like feelings allowed to be expressed,
like an open flow on, of what we felt,
what had happened. Emotions in
the bowels of our being there
were wanting to be let out.
The dry well yawned, thirsting to let
dim depths breathe clear air, to lay
ghosts to rest, to let out buried failures,
to release clod-bound matters.
A well might fail, then source hurt and so
be a forgiveness, source understanding.
Like bowls of Israel's Passover dashed
full of blood, which splashed up 'let us go'.
But for Dad the well was dry, old rags,
indigestible matters sat in a bloodless pit
waiting for digestive juices to flow,
but the past could not be made to pass,
the well remained dry, no emotions
sallied forth out of the bowels,
nothing moved, a clod fell, crumbled,
scant pinchers held any depths of feeling out.
So we began to throw our family rubbish
back down the hole. A leeway of shame
ended all that effort dug in hope.
The shovel marks still scored a pattern
of deep Project in the walls. But Dad
saw a dry well as an act of folly,
a white-elephant blown out of a Father's
typical wilfulness to only get on with things
when the spirit moved.
But, in burying our least precious stuff,
other things get buried.
Empty pineapple cans, old paint tins,
old work clothes full of holes, broken
picture frames, eaten-out wires,
dead workboots, burnt roofing iron,
leaky gumboots, holed saucepans,
gouged truck tyres, handleless frypans,
toothbrushes with no bristles, dried-up
shoes, the shells of passing and skins
of life past...These things passed down
into a dry hole to wait in slow-digest.
When the well was full
soil was dumped to fill over the fill.
Then lumps of grey soil was graded
across till soil stopped sinking .
The well passed away, went under,
so ever since that place looks like
any other surface, there is no way
to tell that there is a dry well filled in
out there. The ground clots, opens
as it is tilled, but a story out of memory
yawns, as the dry emotions still
wait to come to pass.
25 September 1999 © Wayne David Knoll
Coburg, Victoria
There was a pocket handkerchief patch
of grey soil, in the bend of the farm drive,
beside where the new thornless youngberries
went in later. That bit of grey soil was hotter
than the red as grey soil reflected heat.
In summer we grew home tomatoes there
-to ripen better, Or staggered brussels sprouts
for warmer winters.
When I was little I'd water tomatoes or pick
sprouts nearby five fenceposts laid flat,
across the top of a dark hole. Dad said
it was The Well which his father, our Grandad,
Karl Allan Knoll dug, believing that, of all
our hilltop only grey-soil would hold water
[for the normal red soil was self-mulching
so porous, water just sponged away].
But we didn't water tomatoes from the well.
There were pipes and hoses force-pumped
before then. The supply was a creek-dam
right down the bottom of the farm
over the hill.
Times when a man would want
to have a well on top of the hill seemed lost
in archaic perverseness.
But like that darkness going down into
the earth it drew our curiosity.
Like a dead bird would, or like horror story.
It made us want an unknown,
some absence where there should be earth.
The airy darkness going down below
the light chinks, had us imagining all sorts,
unbeings, hair-raising shadows.
We asked Daddy if we could look in,
then, when he pulled back the posts
that made a cover, we lay on grey soil
and nosed down into musty nothing.
Dry and empty, except for
a frog on the bottom.
Dead leaves. Dug abandon!
The Well was useless when needed.
Red porous soil cupped that grey
pocket, breaking gritty sieves
in its impervious membrane. Water rose
with the groundwater-table in winter
and spring, and sunk to nought come the dry. '
We need to fill it in,' Dad said. 'It's dangerous.
The cow might break a leg! Something
will have to be got out of it one day.'
2. Something seemed to be wasted.
What had been for Grandad a source
of inspiration enough for him to dig was,
by course, for Dad a waste of time,
a goose chase, a fool's black hole.
There was no quench or draught
to be found in his father's well.
It was a diminishing source,
a withering spring, where there
should have been flow.
Something seemed to be wasted in
all that work, suffering, and life
gone astray.
The Divining Rod Grandad allowed
himself for importance across earth
was given a little tug. There was water
below, but by heaven was it enough?
A divining rod twitches for us, like
a source in the depths of a heart,
but the 'dig' was after-wards
for Dad as bitter as for poor Burke
at Cooper's Creek, and likewise,
in reactive parches, it wasn't lack
of water which sent life dry.
The well, that false start for Grandad,
who hoped he divined a source where
his sons and daughters might drink
and be satisfied, and was my father's bane;
became, for us boys, a source of revelation,
an opened window into the depths which
showed where a story was, allowed a way
through to that empty vessel below
the surface of the earth, in truth,
a draught of unsung mystery beneath.
Like feelings allowed to be expressed,
like an open flow on, of what we felt,
what had happened. Emotions in
the bowels of our being there
were wanting to be let out.
The dry well yawned, thirsting to let
dim depths breathe clear air, to lay
ghosts to rest, to let out buried failures,
to release clod-bound matters.
A well might fail, then source hurt and so
be a forgiveness, source understanding.
Like bowls of Israel's Passover dashed
full of blood, which splashed up 'let us go'.
But for Dad the well was dry, old rags,
indigestible matters sat in a bloodless pit
waiting for digestive juices to flow,
but the past could not be made to pass,
the well remained dry, no emotions
sallied forth out of the bowels,
nothing moved, a clod fell, crumbled,
scant pinchers held any depths of feeling out.
So we began to throw our family rubbish
back down the hole. A leeway of shame
ended all that effort dug in hope.
The shovel marks still scored a pattern
of deep Project in the walls. But Dad
saw a dry well as an act of folly,
a white-elephant blown out of a Father's
typical wilfulness to only get on with things
when the spirit moved.
But, in burying our least precious stuff,
other things get buried.
Empty pineapple cans, old paint tins,
old work clothes full of holes, broken
picture frames, eaten-out wires,
dead workboots, burnt roofing iron,
leaky gumboots, holed saucepans,
gouged truck tyres, handleless frypans,
toothbrushes with no bristles, dried-up
shoes, the shells of passing and skins
of life past...These things passed down
into a dry hole to wait in slow-digest.
When the well was full
soil was dumped to fill over the fill.
Then lumps of grey soil was graded
across till soil stopped sinking .
The well passed away, went under,
so ever since that place looks like
any other surface, there is no way
to tell that there is a dry well filled in
out there. The ground clots, opens
as it is tilled, but a story out of memory
yawns, as the dry emotions still
wait to come to pass.
25 September 1999 © Wayne David Knoll
Coburg, Victoria
life companions
Out the back, south of the filling garden,
house, sheds together
there was in my childhood a patch of boysens
planted together
sidelong, in half a dozen rows across the hill,
with strawberries
and I still found a few strawberries between
each boysen-bush.
Dad said the strawberries had been planted
before I was born,
long before the boysens were interplanted,
compatibly matched
against strawberries as a planted companion, for he
got two years off
the strawberries before the slow-developing boysens
scratched the backs
of the strawberry pickers, and were ready to put up
on posts and wires.
But that was out of memory for me -like a person
come and gone
before I knew I was able to be known -
for the child I was
knew thrills finding low-ground fruit on
long-unpicked
strawberries, like a friendship accepted
each way.
I went into a "before-me" among such companions...
and long after
the boysens were harvested, set there like dried mud,
I found the past
in that present as in the graces of little strawberries
freely-eaten off old-aged
bushes shared with my sense-stimulated red-stained,
shade and child-friend,
basking in a companionship as if one prayed-to
was there, garlanded under
the sprawl of young thorns held together with
wired old twiggy canes.
8 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
St Joseph’s House of Prayer, Goulburn, NSW
house, sheds together
there was in my childhood a patch of boysens
planted together
sidelong, in half a dozen rows across the hill,
with strawberries
and I still found a few strawberries between
each boysen-bush.
Dad said the strawberries had been planted
before I was born,
long before the boysens were interplanted,
compatibly matched
against strawberries as a planted companion, for he
got two years off
the strawberries before the slow-developing boysens
scratched the backs
of the strawberry pickers, and were ready to put up
on posts and wires.
But that was out of memory for me -like a person
come and gone
before I knew I was able to be known -
for the child I was
knew thrills finding low-ground fruit on
long-unpicked
strawberries, like a friendship accepted
each way.
I went into a "before-me" among such companions...
and long after
the boysens were harvested, set there like dried mud,
I found the past
in that present as in the graces of little strawberries
freely-eaten off old-aged
bushes shared with my sense-stimulated red-stained,
shade and child-friend,
basking in a companionship as if one prayed-to
was there, garlanded under
the sprawl of young thorns held together with
wired old twiggy canes.
8 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
St Joseph’s House of Prayer, Goulburn, NSW
skun tomatoes
Big buckets of steaming water sat
on the grass under the white desert cedar
near the back of the house, next to
half-cases of homegrown tomatoes, with
aluminium or enamelled preserving pans,
and we sat and worked them into the hot water
... red bobbing fruit softening in the stew
But it was the skin we wanted to remove
The reddened stuff shrunk in heat
so the skin cracked like a crazy painting
and tore back in dog-ears and rips
like pages of a well thumbed bible
so that we could skin it off the pulp
sheathing the indigestible covering away
to get to the soft tomato inside.
The skins unzipped to leave naked bodies
of fruit in the baby-flesh, out of its skin
as covered bits undressed after summer
-more like burn-victims in the third degree-
just as we were told 'don;t be such a baby"
"take a look at yourself" and expected
to see inside our surface will and shed
all ego, like skins cracking ego of our faces
to be enabled in life understood as sacrifice
to be digested like decided fates
among the clan of givers and partakers.
the tomatoes were not going to get any graft
as the boilhot skins built up in a discarded fling
while the soggy balls of skun harvest
waited in preserving pans to be packed
in row formations with wooden levers
into rubber sealed Fowlers Vacola jars,
and hot-bottled to good use on the wood stove.
9 December 1996 © Wayne Davdi Knoll
St Joseph’s House of Prayer, Goulburn, NSW
on the grass under the white desert cedar
near the back of the house, next to
half-cases of homegrown tomatoes, with
aluminium or enamelled preserving pans,
and we sat and worked them into the hot water
... red bobbing fruit softening in the stew
But it was the skin we wanted to remove
The reddened stuff shrunk in heat
so the skin cracked like a crazy painting
and tore back in dog-ears and rips
like pages of a well thumbed bible
so that we could skin it off the pulp
sheathing the indigestible covering away
to get to the soft tomato inside.
The skins unzipped to leave naked bodies
of fruit in the baby-flesh, out of its skin
as covered bits undressed after summer
-more like burn-victims in the third degree-
just as we were told 'don;t be such a baby"
"take a look at yourself" and expected
to see inside our surface will and shed
all ego, like skins cracking ego of our faces
to be enabled in life understood as sacrifice
to be digested like decided fates
among the clan of givers and partakers.
the tomatoes were not going to get any graft
as the boilhot skins built up in a discarded fling
while the soggy balls of skun harvest
waited in preserving pans to be packed
in row formations with wooden levers
into rubber sealed Fowlers Vacola jars,
and hot-bottled to good use on the wood stove.
9 December 1996 © Wayne Davdi Knoll
St Joseph’s House of Prayer, Goulburn, NSW
Berry Post
berry post - circa 1956
Every patch of brambles had to be
put up -on wires. Which meant
the posts had to be split, -like
fence posts -And holes dug along
each row and at each end for the posts
to be rammed-n-planted in.
The end posts had no stay; they were
enabled to stand as strainers
only because Dad found a way to hole
them in a tension, rammed with
a split slab of buried wood as
a broad shield in the way of strain.
The rows ended in the jaunty
irregular stand of each rows posts
which sidled the headland like odd
yardposts longing to make a mile
where we walked and found good
lean places, good slouch places.
Or else bird-perch watchtowers
to stand atop and survey all
the berry patch. Play spot the picker.
High stools -with a perch
for each single child, like magpies
in the garden of our nest.
We went from one post to another
expecting a word, a call.
For these lines were drawn on
the pages of our childhoods
And the posts were exclamation marks
punctuating it all.
Like birds on the wire they only
gradually understand, coded messages
came in under my bottom and
under my feet, I was a postie
at the pillars of the berrypatch,
picking up the soil-writ letters of life.
9 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
Goulburn NSW
Every patch of brambles had to be
put up -on wires. Which meant
the posts had to be split, -like
fence posts -And holes dug along
each row and at each end for the posts
to be rammed-n-planted in.
The end posts had no stay; they were
enabled to stand as strainers
only because Dad found a way to hole
them in a tension, rammed with
a split slab of buried wood as
a broad shield in the way of strain.
The rows ended in the jaunty
irregular stand of each rows posts
which sidled the headland like odd
yardposts longing to make a mile
where we walked and found good
lean places, good slouch places.
Or else bird-perch watchtowers
to stand atop and survey all
the berry patch. Play spot the picker.
High stools -with a perch
for each single child, like magpies
in the garden of our nest.
We went from one post to another
expecting a word, a call.
For these lines were drawn on
the pages of our childhoods
And the posts were exclamation marks
punctuating it all.
Like birds on the wire they only
gradually understand, coded messages
came in under my bottom and
under my feet, I was a postie
at the pillars of the berrypatch,
picking up the soil-writ letters of life.
9 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll
Goulburn NSW
The Separator Shed
The separator shed had
two separators. The dark
old oily one was dysfunctional when
it came to milk, but then there was
the then newish-fangled streamline-trim
blue separator in daily use for turning
our cow’s raw milk into skim and cream
which was patted out into kitchen butter.
Milk was separated once, maybe twice
a day, the shed used as if an outside
bathroom of animal ablutions
which kept the world healthy.
The other separator had lost
the daily milk of its bathroom plumbing,
but its larger handle was on a ratchet
and its big vertical circles geared down
to a top heavy flywheel on the horizontal,
which me and my brothers would spin
fast as we could, with the tempo of its hum
pitching up higher and higher, rising the
thinner scales as we gave young muscle to its crank,
till the freewheeling weight was sounding
as if to take off like a rocket, shaking that
weatherboard shed, roaring up for the separation
of small boys in dreams out of the dust
and spiderwebs in that daily shed’s benches.
Up and up we went, above the yard, over the dirt
of the farm, it wheeled up into ice-cream
sound tracks - to the jet-roads of the clouds.
2 Feb 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
'The Cascades' Stony Creek, East Monbulk, Victoria
two separators. The dark
old oily one was dysfunctional when
it came to milk, but then there was
the then newish-fangled streamline-trim
blue separator in daily use for turning
our cow’s raw milk into skim and cream
which was patted out into kitchen butter.
Milk was separated once, maybe twice
a day, the shed used as if an outside
bathroom of animal ablutions
which kept the world healthy.
The other separator had lost
the daily milk of its bathroom plumbing,
but its larger handle was on a ratchet
and its big vertical circles geared down
to a top heavy flywheel on the horizontal,
which me and my brothers would spin
fast as we could, with the tempo of its hum
pitching up higher and higher, rising the
thinner scales as we gave young muscle to its crank,
till the freewheeling weight was sounding
as if to take off like a rocket, shaking that
weatherboard shed, roaring up for the separation
of small boys in dreams out of the dust
and spiderwebs in that daily shed’s benches.
Up and up we went, above the yard, over the dirt
of the farm, it wheeled up into ice-cream
sound tracks - to the jet-roads of the clouds.
2 Feb 2006 © Wayne David Knoll
'The Cascades' Stony Creek, East Monbulk, Victoria
The Earth is a Dam in a Country Boy's Hands.
Poems of an Australian Peasantry and formed word-hoarded 'songs' made to sing of what it was like being raised from the 1950s on, to be a farmer on a family smallholding, mixed farm and horticultural and berry farm in the Silvan-Wandin district of the Dandenongs and Upper Yarra Valley, east of Melbourne Victoria
Some of these poems were written for a collection called 'Blues for Raspberries'
Some of these poems were written for a collection called 'Blues for Raspberries'
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