I could have stayed by those distant mountains where mine was a fairly well known face <br />And live a quiet life where old friends live far north of here in my Homeplace <br />But I had the wanderlust in me and the wanderlust took me away <br />To places far south of the Boggeragh mountains where I live and grow old and gray. <br /> <br />There I was what one would call reasonably happy and I am reasonably happy today <br />But the lust of the wander still in me though my old memories are in decay <br />Of the old woods fields, rivers and mountains that do not seem to age with time <br />That decades ago in the long gone Seasons inspired the long dead Bards to rhyme. <br /> <br />The brown wren's song so loud for a tiny bird I struggle now to memorize <br />And the old bracken hills of my boyhood I find harder to visualize <br />The wildflowers of Summer in the lush green meadows hosts to wild honeybees and white butterflies <br />And those snow hatted hills of the Winter are fading in my memory's eyes. <br /> <br />Yet the lust of the wander still in me and it will live in me till I die <br />And I yearn for places far distant far from where the masked lapwing cry <br />In the Town Parklands of Wonthaggi in mid Winter in chilly July <br />At night time one can hear them calling as above their breeding grounds they fly. <br /> <br />The nostalgia in me is dying and the old memories are in decay <br />But the lust of the wander still in me and in me till death it will stay <br />I have travelled far south of my Homeland and passed through landscapes brown and green <br />But I still yearn for exotic places for places that others have seen. <br /> <br />The lust of the wander still in me though I am now ageing and gray <br />And from my old Northern Homeland I live many air miles away <br />Compared to some I'm not well travelled and great adventures I don't have to recall <br />For despite what some people tell you it is not a small World after all.<br /><br />Francis Duggan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-lust-of-the-wander-still-in-me/
