The other day I was feeling nostalgic and old, which in my case, sometimes manifests a poem (or my attempt at a poem). To Carol and Griselda

I always feared the eucalyptus grove. 
But to get to castle rock,
And brag to hesitant bones that our minds
still had the power to rule our wretched bodies.
And that time
Mighty time, unforgiving time,
had no harness we couldn’t break …
We had to pass through the eucalyptus grove.

Our walk till then, under open skies,
With horizons both east and west 
As far as the mind could fathom 
Of the ocean and the mountains,
The cows grazing in the fields
And ships heading out to sea,
The city below with all of it’s nooks and crannies exposed 
Deceived us into lazy thinking.

And then, to toad-croak mating songs, we’d enter the grove 
Pelted by pods and petal-less flowers
Twigs and eucalyptus dust from
the murmuring and jiggering …
Constant flapping of earth bound wings
Trapped and endlessly wailing …
Even on a calm day … Gum trees.

Oh the smell!
you would say and lapse into thinking
You could win
One more madcap challenge to the Outback,
Just one more time with old Matilda
Riding Black
Just one more time,
A skinny dip in the Indian Ocean after 
Days of sweat and dust.  

The boughs are cracking over head and we are drifting, I know not where … 

Then let’s run! Run through the eucalyptus grove.

Something was always lost or stolen
each time through that grove.
Could you feel it?

No, I couldn’t either.
Not at the time.

Then let’s run as fast as we can,
through the eucalyptus grove.