Poem: Yallaroo
This week’s Poet’s Corner contribution is from Leon van der Linde, who has found home far from where he was born.
Photo: Patrick / Wikimedia Commons
Yallaroo
The morning quiet
hangs like mist
over the stringybark hills
of Yallaroo farm
triggering memories of Africa,
split like antelope spoor,
leaving imprints, deep within –
etched into sinews,
tendons and nerves
gently swaying, just like
thorn tree leaves,
stirring the knee-high grass
in the savannahs
of my heart
will my new dreams,
here,
be less ambivalent,
more fulfilling,
peaceful,
happier?
the answer may lie
higher above
in the wedge-tailed eagle’s
solitary glide,
and the way it
contours the silence
with its shades of
dark-brown and black.
Leon van der Linde was born in Zambia. He lives with his family on a small farm near the rural locality of Yarrowyck on the western slopes of the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales and works as a psychologist in nearby Armidale. ‘Yallaroo is a jewel and I have found home…’