Lizard stick

A poem I wrote about a favourite lizard-shaped stick - one of many! - at Peak Hill, in June 2010

Knotted mulga Lizard Stick,
‘twas only me you ever tricked,
but once you did you always played upon my memory.

I saw you every out and back,
your silhouette against the track,
on the quartz between the ruts that tortured you and me.

I liked the way your head was high,
turned back to the northern sky,
as if you’d strayed too far from home and thought you should return.

If only you had gone that way!
Cos when I passed by yesterday,
There was wood scraped up beside the track, and I tightened with concern.

That dreadful march of progress!
That tempered blade that never rests!
Some diesel demon broke you down into a heap of splinters.

To others you were just a stick;
to me your presence was the trick
that cooled down stinking summer days and warmed up solemn winters.

I didn’t mind your rigid pose:
through changing light your beauty showed.
You were the constant, grounded pivot about which things revolved.

Lizard Stick, my Uluru,
until your end I never knew,
how much a man can love a thing so simple and so old