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