Busy windscreen wipers turn, turn again
their one palimpsest page, farmer's hymnal,
since Gippsland's misted in a drizzling cloud;
black calves stand dazed by the phenomenon;
back home* gutters and drains are chuckling loud,
though an intermittent soaking is all
that blank white baffling of mist can afford.
We've been to the vintage car museum,
Maffra, to have old chassis shells ring bells,
recalling streets we ran out foolish on
producing squeals of brakes and worried yells,
days (UK) silences would pass between
the hulking vehicles -
no traffic stream -
though gutter puddles leap up now as then.
But on the way back through this drizzling stir,
odd motor looms - the 60's bearing by -
time-bubbles blow their urges to preserve
from suburbia about highways;
yet profligate generations need secure
these decades replanting minds
to supply,
against warming eras, less insane days.
........................
*By 'back home I mean in Joy's place' a few miles away and hours later not in UK, not like a 'meanwhile back at the ranch'.
