By Kim Waters.
his is the house he first bought for her –
a dark-haired girl with Gene Tierney eyes.
A girl who easily swapped her life
of servitude for a ring and a baby
and a house with thorny-rose papered walls.
This is the house where she could hear
the Yarriambiack Creek at the bottom
of a vine-tangled garden and the pumping beat
of a church organ on a Sunday morning,
where, after the service, she’d gossip
with neighbours, pushing a pram back
and forth, as a surly cat preened itself
on a figurined window sill.
This is the house where she made her life,
where the copper kept her arms well-muscled
and there was always washing to hang on a line.
This is the house where, after the war,
she folded away his uniform
grateful to have him come back home,
though part of him was left behind.
This is the house they sold in the 50s
to head to a town with a T&G,
where they bought a business and made
new friends, leaving the past to photographs.
This is the house that still stands today
beside the Yarriambiack Creek,
its outhouse now brought inside,
its Baltic floorboards primed and limed,
where a thorny-rose can still be seen
at the back of a built-in glass vitrine.
