My other blog

I don't publish much here, having set this blog up only so that I could post to other Blogger journals of my e-friends.

My main blog is at Scratches & Scribbles. It would by nice to have you visit over there and leave a comment or three.

Country Retreat - a haibun

Friday -

Steel and glass towers and oily bay water, half observed and quickly gone. Tunnel and cutting conceal factories and suburbs from us and us from them. Gardens become yards. Yards turn into paddocks. My breathing slows and white knuckled grip on the steering wheel loosens.

Olive green eucalyptus fill the roadside and the air. Grey fleeced sheep graze single file on close-cropped hillside grass and big-eyed cows lift their heads to watch us pass. A village – we slow – police here care – a pub, a shop and not much more. Edge of town and we gather speed, not long now. A long, slow curve down past vineyard signs and narrow openings to country lanes.

Late afternoon shadows fill the long veranda of a yellow sandstone courthouse and follow the last tourists from the gaol. The country storekeeper gathers her baskets and folk art boxes from the footpath. At his doorway, the restaurateur ties on his apron, adjusts his cap and enters to start an evening of chopping and dicing and socialising. One last corner – the rough-hewn slab cottage is as we left it – patchwork, candlewick, claw-foot bath and … the orchard –

red sun through the trees -

an old greying garden bench

warm in the last light