Been here a week, and lucky to arrive
one day after a ferocious heatwave;
but with forty forecast for Sunday,
Saturday we drove up to Traralgon,
to 'The Good Guys' for a bonza AC.
We'd found a beaut online; the store had it,
across the road in rented storage shed.
Bewhiskered red-head boy came mumbling up:
'We can't get in; the lock won't work at all!'
So back to 'The Incompetent Guys'' store
haggling for 'we've been stuffed around' discount,
finally leave - a beast of a machine
on our back seat.
In Peterkin street park,
we ate our sangas and the birds moved in.
Mudlark beneath bright blue grating table
mooched off with cheese in his beak, an ibis
strolled by, heading for the birthday debris
(party departed) by orange table,
piratical cutlass beak for the jab.
"Let's go to the Traralgon Railway Reserve.
There's wetland and shady strolls in the woods."
But when we got there we found marsh had dried,
lake shrunk to a duck pond, a mass of fowl
eager for food, moorhens running stilt legged
to surround us, like chickens about feet.
It was only thirty five but muggy.
After a hundred yards of shady trees,
gave up, turned back, sweat drenched, breath laboring,
made for the car's AC, rode our steel cage,
home to install the white goods bonza beast,
ready for the morrow's inferno.
..................
It is said that writers might get a little blister on their index finger
might get a blister on their thumb ;)
Never mind Martian colonies, we need stuff to maintain our earth colonies.
