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.
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?
You might like
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…’