This is for Second-Hand Harry and Chip-Fat Franco.

 

The neat, second-hand furniture shop

has gone, I got my bookshelves there.

If I pressed, carefully, not too hard but

firm and fair, I could always get a good

price, on the right day, a free delivery.

 

The business disappeared on Friday.

It closed, sadly, forever just on three.

The owner, Harry, didn’t call for a beer

at the club or collect his usual mates-rate

seafood dinner from fat Franco the fryer.

 

He just, or so I was told, loaded a few

odds and sods into the back of his ute,

tied down the cover with fraying rope,

and drove away towards the highway.

Moved to the mountains, somebody said.

 

Today I looked into the changing shop,

and asked a stylish, silken shirted man,

‘where is Harry?’ He simply sniggered,

fingered his fine toothbrush moustache,

and adjusted his fake athenaeum club tie.

 

He flashed a permanently painted smile

and shrugged the perfectly cut shoulders

of his Saville Row suit. ‘Gone,’ he said,

clearly taking great pleasure in the words,

‘to distant - and possibly greener pastures?’

 

‘I am here now, a couturier, a fine tailor,

a stockist of rich silk and quality cotton,

of saris to delight the discerning ladies,

long sherwani coats for young gentlemen,

fashions of today and tomorrow’, he said.

 

Head slightly on one side he then surveyed

his empire of multi-coloured opulence and

savoured its promises of profits and power.

I said good day and walk on down the street.

Changing times, I reflected, changing times.

 

End Note: The streets of Liverpool NSW resemble the elements of a kaleidoscope that, when shaken, come to rest and give a multi-faceted pattern of life that exists only until the next shake.

 

Changing Times - Liverpool NSW © Dermott Ryder

 

 

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