With Mother Nature Libby lives in harmony <br />She loves the woodland every bush and tree <br />She know the birds she know them by their song <br />The yellow robin, butcherbird and currawong. <br /> <br />She says that birds like us not wholly free <br />That bird song is more about territory <br />The kookaburra never laughs for joy <br />But as a warning to his kindred bird nearby. <br /> <br />She never had children never was a wife <br />And in her house by the wood she has spent most of her life <br />Three score and ten years on her next birthday <br />Her once brown hair clipped short is silver gray. <br /> <br />Her lover Jim died seven years ago <br />From prostrate cancer his end painful and slow <br />They had lived together for close to thirty years <br />And her great sense of loss was washed away in tears. <br /> <br />Their great love for Nature was their common bond <br />And on Spring evenings they often walked to gray gum pond <br />Just to watch the little dabchick dive for prey <br />Such happy memories never fade away. <br /> <br />By woodland grass margins at the dawn of day <br />She watch the swamp wallabies box and play <br />Before they hop to cover of the trees <br />To hide in undergrowth up to the knees. <br /> <br />She recognize each plant that in the woodland grow <br />And about Nature there's not much that she doesn't know <br />She love the wild broom cloaked in their yellow flowers <br />By woodland paths in summer's early hours. <br /> <br />The name of every wild thing, bush and tree <br />Is stored away in Libby's memory <br />And she wake each morning at the dawn of day <br />To watch the swamp wallabies box and play.<br /><br />Francis Duggan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/libby/
