quiet ruins falling

when i was younger i would walk through empty houses calling
hearths of stone blackened by embers, and quiet ruins falling
when i was younger i would sit and draw the land in charcoal
rusting iron, river clay, weathered faces that seemed so old

when i was younger i’d run home, breathing the breath of the grain
to where the rain spattered on our tin roof, over the five of us again
when we were younger there was a place where bibles ruled like steel
though everyone smiled on ‘sunday at fairy floss and ferris wheel

as i grow older life seems far from that old green hearth of stone
where dad made fires chimney high, as the clouds wrote their poems
when we were younger, we’d help mum gather in washing from the line
just as the beautiful rain fell across our wirlinga home, in time