The First Day Of Summer Poem by Francis Duggan

A pleasant day with a slight cooling breeze
And a forecast high of twenty five degrees
And blackbird pipe on a coastal ti tree
In Cape Paterson beside the Gippsland sea.

The first of December Summer came overnight
And Spring had left before the dawn's first light
And thirty one days left in the old year
When Summer comes to the Southern Hemisphere.

in Gippsland further north the bushfires blaze
And in New South Wales the woods have burnt for days
And wise old Johnny gray as silver said
Bushfires already and warmer days ahead.

At midnight to the paddock and the park
Summer arrived under the cloak of dark
And bushfires blazed in the last days of Spring
And in Cape Paterson the blackbird sing.