Francis Duggan Mountains Poems

From the overnight frost the old fields looking gray
It is cold by the mountains from here far away
In the farm sheds the cattle are bellowing for silage or hay
In the silent dawn of a December day
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In fancy it comes wafting to me in the breeze the sweet scent of hay
In the fields by the mountains from here far away
When the little brown lark is singing as he fly
A musical speck in the gray of the sky
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I can visualize the sweet scent of hay
Under a blue sunny sky with just a few clouds of gray
A gentle freshening breeze on a nice summer's day
In July by the mountains from here far away
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She is the last poet of the mountains a brown eyed one her hair is silver gray
By her home the white cockies screech on the tall gums in her poems on them she has much to say
Their sulphur crests they raise as the whim takes them of their ways there is little she does not know
She has known them since she was a child in the mid fifties and that's going back some five decades ago.
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December by the mountains the mountains far away
And the old fields by the high wood in the morning looking gray
It has been freezing overnight a cold chill is in the breeze
And the hungry rooks are calling on the leafless old beech trees.
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The cock pheasant cucks where the rank rushes grow
And in the cool of the dawn in grove and on hedgerow
The songbirds are singing to greet the new day
And everywhere lush and green in the prime of the May,
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Up there in the wild Snowy Mountains the wombats at nightfall venture out
For to graze in the high and brown paddocks and enjoy their nocturnal walkabout
And dingoes the wild brown dogs are howling once heard them one cannot mistake
They rest in the woods in the daylight and hunt from nightfall till daybreak.
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From the hills above the Gold Coast the steep mountain road twists down
Through lush green flat lands and cane fields on through Murwillumbah Town
On through the Town of Mullumbimby through banana plantation
country
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