In week 5 of 2020 I wrote about my father at Yarloop in WA this is a little more about it.
DAD AT YARLOOP
Before I was born, or mum had even met dad,
Noel lived at Yarloop, near where they chopped wood,
He owned a bicycle a rickety thing,
but it got him around, with no gears and no springs!
Sometimes when he rode it he ached with the cold
He had to start early for the mill he was bound,
He was told that the way to keep out the cold wind
Was to wrap up in newspaper put it next o your skin!
So although he rustled as he peddled along
He was much warmer and he’d get there on time,
In an old leather case with a handle worn thin
Was an old silver cornet with a dent in the bell,
For his cornet he told me had come from a shop
Where the owner had pawned it and never gone back,
It was slick and ‘‘twas silver and he made it shine,
And for 50 odd years that cornet played fine,
But it never played better than it did at Yarloop
That tiny small place in the West and down south,
The parents were happy the kids came along
To hear stories of Jesus and sing happy songs
When Noel played to the kids in the hessians bag hut
From the photo I’ve seen the kids lapped it up,
The old man he wondered where are they today ?
Those who for a short while stopped in their play
To hear a young fella play his cornet for them,
And then turn his push bike back home once again.
Heather Denholm aka Bleggy
Written before 2012 revised August 2020.
I am a member of the West Australian bush poets and sometime we are given a challenge to write a poem using words we are given
on one occasion I was given.
His footsteps slowed as he walked the road !
so this is what I wrote
When dad was quite young he had just begun
to preach and to visit his flock
Yarloop was his first it was close to his heart
‘‘twas a place to him meant quite a lot
His church was all bags, a hut in the Bush
where he preached to an overflow crowd
Then when he retired he’d visit the town
tell of weddings or folk he had buried
I never told dad that Yarloop was no more
That the place that he loved was in ashes
In Ballarat on that day my dad passed away
his will said in yarloop spread his ashes
So we sprinkle dads ashes in the soot of Yarloop
And someone beside me is walking
For his footsteps slowed as he walked the road
It was dad and to God he was talking.
Bleggy 2021