Francis Duggan - Libby

With Mother Nature Libby lives in harmony
She loves the woodland every bush and tree
She know the birds she know them by their song
The yellow robin, butcherbird and currawong.

She says that birds like us not wholly free
That bird song is more about territory
The kookaburra never laughs for joy
But as a warning to his kindred bird nearby.

She never had children never was a wife
And in her house by the wood she has spent most of her life
Three score and ten years on her next birthday
Her once brown hair clipped short is silver gray.

Her lover Jim died seven years ago
From prostrate cancer his end painful and slow
They had lived together for close to thirty years
And her great sense of loss was washed away in tears.

Their great love for Nature was their common bond
And on Spring evenings they often walked to gray gum pond
Just to watch the little dabchick dive for prey
Such happy memories never fade away.

By woodland grass margins at the dawn of day
She watch the swamp wallabies box and play
Before they hop to cover of the trees
To hide in undergrowth up to the knees.

She recognize each plant that in the woodland grow
And about Nature there's not much that she doesn't know
She love the wild broom cloaked in their yellow flowers
By woodland paths in summer's early hours.

The name of every wild thing, bush and tree
Is stored away in Libby's memory
And she wake each morning at the dawn of day
To watch the swamp wallabies box and play.

Francis Duggan

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/libby/