Honeysuckle Moments

I was once a stenographer for four years, in a town in the red earth outback.
I walked to and from work, waving off sticky flies in the hot summer days,
past dilapidated palings, unpainted by time, enclosing a ruinous homestead,
with its outhouses, cookhouse and stables and smithy, all crumbling away.

In the derelict fowl house and run, rusty chicken wire hung from skewed posts.
Unrestrained, a bougainvillea, rust-red, canopied a collapsing gazebo.
For a century this formed the hub of a sheep, and then cattle station,
that extended for many square acres of land, almost into the town.

Once-white paint peeled from walls and french windows, to the floor below.
From still-lovely wrought iron of lace railings, white flakes floated down
on the splintery wood of the wide ‘wrap-around’ verandah floor.
Still tin-capped, hardwood stumps were subsiding in red earth below.

With the death of the owner, the only descendant of pioneer squatters
who established the property, no repairs ever had been done to the place.
So when rotting front porch and front stairs were pristinely restored,
rumour said that this could be the work of the Historic Building Trust.

For a few days bikini-clad models were observed there, prettily posing
for the cameras, advertising sundry wares, for the wry entertainment
of the locals. But afterwards homestead and outhouses went on decaying
through all seasons, as its second century came and its first century went.

I had gone on my annual leave when the homestead was razed, and returned
to find only a few heaps of rubble, with bits of white lace iron, remaining.
But behind weathered palings, the outhouses still seemed untroubled,
with the same rotting tackle suspended from warped stable walls.

Once red-painted, now rusting, tin roofs still supported a rampant green mass
of old vines. Suddenly, a momentary upsurge of joy caught me all unaware,
when the sweet scent of orange-gold blossoms in the air filled my senses,
and nostalgia brought scenes from times long gone by to my mind.

In that harsh, outback clime, at beginning and end of mundane work days,
I would linger at times by that ruinous fence, inhaling the sweet scented air.
And for years, whenever my dreams were honeysuckle tendril entwined,
waking, I yearned for more honeysuckle-scented moments in my life.