I AM BUT A POOR MAN...WALKING A COUNTRY ROAD...

© Copyright Brian Carter, 2010

I am but a poor man in a world full of riches
The earth provides me with many bright gems of light every day
As I am seeking them all the time....
I look beyond the fake film of impatience, concrete and insecurity
To the blend of hope, calm and tranquility of natures creatures
and the busy and peaceful human being.

I am in Bororen (Boroaren) on the Bruce highway
With fifty road trains an hour
And fifty rail trains a day, not a hundred metres from my sleeping abode.
The trucks abound only ten metres to the bitumen from my bed...my cubby
At June and Ray's cuddly little roadside caravan park.
But I do not hear the trucks and trains when I wish to sleep.

The transport is a mechanical symphony that rocks me to sleep
As I seek different sounds and tunes in their engines and drivers.
The trains are like my train set as a child
That I built out of match boxes and blocks
A world full of toys now come to life
Their blinkered image as they snake thru the trees,
Viewed from a distant forest and wilderness.

The express ''Tilt'' train worms its way at great speed
Past blinking trees, like a silver catterpillar,
Seeking refuge from a hovering bird.
Bororen is a small highway town in Queensland near Seventeen Seventy
And the Southern most point of the Grand Barrier Reef.
Like many small Australian towns, almost lost in its own infinity.

A town charged with gossip, drive, spirit, instinct, survival
And a smothering layer of natures best overlay
On busy lives and commercial, smoking, noisy, orchestral transport system
Of trains, trucks, caravans and campers going North, South and West
Leaving East for me and a few locals.....
All honoring work, retirement, lazyness and holiday ethics of daily lives.

The main shopping strip...the length of a good Rugby try
Or a long Aussie torpedo punt
Dressed up with the Bororen Hotel...Motel
Housing still the aura of the Aussie outback
With all its hats and smoking suspicion and apprehension.
The allready delectable rude timber ''Daves little creations''....
With creatures, culture, sculpture bewitched by imagination.

A general store held in time with 1870 still hanging out its curtains and product
For all to view and be enticed by the joys of jumbled words and product...
And 1960s westerns and sitcoms on an in house ten inch TV mmmm.


A memorial in the rail side travellers park honoring all by faith in the young
To continue to defend all that is revered
And bless those fallen in that task...hopefully of the past
But still fringed by conflict in other parts of the world
where we offer our duty to ourselves
The earth beneath us
The creatures around us
The time we have given
And the mistakes we have made.

Best of all is the gentle sights, sounds and smells
The passing cattle trucks offering the nose something to remember
The often operatic jumble of mechanical noise
Occasionally suffocating the gentle sounds of the birds
With the endearing silence of the forest and country road...
When all creatures hear a new pin drop and go silent for seconds
To compute any danger in the intruders presence, shape and sound.

The daily acceptance of stopping a good yarn in the middle
To allow a loud, symphonic truck to go past
In the middle of a mechanical rock opera!!!
Then to repeat the story without a blink.
The benefits of a trucks sounds preventing occasionally
Another boring story told many times before!!

A fine country road heading east over the busy highway
And main railway line, with its magnetic, straight lines
Narrowing North and South to beyond or to nowhere it seems.
The Eastern country road that belongs to me alone at times
With some locals dashing everywhere.

I set off from the operatic prattle of the main street
Past the comfort station that absorbs tourists and truck drivers alike.
A meeting place for drivers bringing huge metal monsters
For mining purposes, North with police and transport entourage
That take up all the road and much of the landscape
As they trundle past, offering great drama to the symphony of metal,
motor, scale, magnitude and imagination.

Past the railway signals that offer ''proceed'' to me
Into this calm and peaceful sound of busy, noisy ''Avarian'', silent natural wonderland!!
The country bitumen glides thru these charming and calming everglades
Of wetland, road verge, distant eroding hills, fringed with white trunked trees.
Pastures of many grazed grasses, harvested all day and night by
Kangaroos, cattle horses, bustard, snakes, lizards, ibis, quail,, thrush
Wagtail, predatory feathered kings of the air
And a throng of infinite small birds, insects, spiders.....

Joined at many roadside ponds by by singing frogs, yabbies, paddling small fish and dragonflies
With the ever present mosquoito and midgee!!!
The air and grasses filled with red winged parrots, honey eaters, rainbow lorrikeets,
ring necked lorikeets, galahs, many families of red backed wrens, kookaburras, kingfishers and more.
All stop in awe as a pair of brolgas fly low overhead
Like peaceful B52 or Lancaster bombers watching all below
As masters and gods of the air.

The Brolgas often standing like graceful sentinals or roman soldiers
Then lowering their heads to graze.
Brolgas are in tune with all around them
With awesome raising of their wings and bodies
To show off their size and power.
Rising into the air at a low level
to tip the earths fringes as they fly low over the earths busy pastures....

Then offering their croaking call as the time for all to close down
Curl up under wing or in the trees, hollow or burrow
And go to sleep to avoid the adventures, dangers
And predators of the night.

As I walk at my gentle observing pace, seeking all movement
Or new sights ahead and at all peripheral levels
I observe to my right and left the gentle speed I travel
As an aware human being, as the trees and landscape
Gently glide past and beside me.

I am but a poor man, offered riches and riddles every day.
Observed by my eyes, ears and invisible senses
Searching for details obscure to most
Who search mostly for plunder.
I am but a poor man in a bed of riches
offered by the spirits of infinity and powers of observation....
and understanding.
In Bororen you can observe everything that matters
And everything that doesn't matter!!!!
Depending on the slant of your observation, calm and patience
At the time.