HOP ON TOPONYMY

 

A Gazetteer of Ageing Australia

 

We may or may not

know how any places were named

nor why we set up and down

such places

everywhere we could

from the first place

when nowhere

and no-one needed names.

 

On those drip fed days

and slipper shuffling nights

when we're feeling

as ancient as this continent

we keep rewind dreaming

on and on

until our batteries

can be assaulted no more

than they can be recharged.

 

while framing the Zimmera

across the endless shopping Mallee

disregarded by stony desert faced youths

intent on popping a whole Pillbara.

 

once we had a Siding Spring in our steps

but since then

so struggled and woe survived

to achieve our own quorum of bungles

that singled us without and about

amidst the plain old Nullabores.

 

Greygummed, melanomadic,

chewing diabetel beer nuts,

no added saltpans, colonic irrigation scheming,

kidney stoned instead of billabonged,

speech sedimented by oracular degeneration

and the rap-rapacious salinity of the

alphabetting ring of Gens next, next, next!

 

Rounding Cape Defibrillation again

from witless Sundays to in situ stupor-stupid Saturdays

we can at least challenge the diagnosis

of a dead heart adding us to the

lengthening list of endangered species

we belatedly admit responsibility for.

 

As our senses erode and our minds disperse

the weather dispenses with us

and the seasons recycle

our ageing country into new reagents

that none of us will get to know about

by clawing against the coma.

 

So what if we are stranded

on a great barrier of grief,

or greatly divided,

or whirly-whirlying

around the dusty scatter of our memories,

yet

there are still flowers wilder than us

there are still ranges beyond our derangement

there are still forms of life's constant reformations

there is still a riparian reflection in our eyes

of the great and glass-unhoused windscreen

encompassing the never to be outmoded

timeless shifting kaleidoscopic

antipodean sky.....

 

Now, would you please

Hop on Toponymy

so that we can then name

the very special place in our ending

from the something that we can still start!

 

Our expedition is almost over

but just imagine what you

youngsters have yet to discover.....

 

(c) 2013 Hamish Danks Brown a.ka. Danksta Downunder