Postcard
A postcard arrived for Christmas
sent a hundred years ago
one of those strange delays that happens
amazing it should show
Sender was away in the Sun
of a European war
and was heading home soon
to find this door
But the old lady who lived here
waited for one who never came home
and now the mystery is solved
in a very short tome
"I'm off to California
to hunt me some gold
and then sail the Pacific
with a couple of chums of old."
So that's where the blighter went to
and there was the name
the same as a fella in Papua
who married a local dame
Never made it all the way home
maybe wanted to vanish away
went native in the islands
let a new life hold sway
Where the singing of the tribe
would be better than church hymns
where the crashing of the waves
would wash away those sins
Of war in the trenches of France
where men were driven mad
by gas and bombs and bullets
in an evil so vile, so bad
A new life under the tropical sun
could heal a shredded soul
and tame the inner demons
to make a spirit whole
Songs in the rhythm of heat and dance
humming with birds of paradise
strolls in speckled shadows
canoes in the bay at sunrise
Jaqi
Bluh
Monday
24
December
2018
A postcard arrived for Christmas
sent a hundred years ago
one of those strange delays that happens
amazing it should show
Sender was away in the Sun
of a European war
and was heading home soon
to find this door
But the old lady who lived here
waited for one who never came home
and now the mystery is solved
in a very short tome
"I'm off to California
to hunt me some gold
and then sail the Pacific
with a couple of chums of old."
So that's where the blighter went to
and there was the name
the same as a fella in Papua
who married a local dame
Never made it all the way home
maybe wanted to vanish away
went native in the islands
let a new life hold sway
Where the singing of the tribe
would be better than church hymns
where the crashing of the waves
would wash away those sins
Of war in the trenches of France
where men were driven mad
by gas and bombs and bullets
in an evil so vile, so bad
A new life under the tropical sun
could heal a shredded soul
and tame the inner demons
to make a spirit whole
Songs in the rhythm of heat and dance
humming with birds of paradise
strolls in speckled shadows
canoes in the bay at sunrise
Jaqi
Bluh
Monday
24
December
2018
NOTE ~ Visit the museum in Bremen, German, and find that it is packed with artefacts from New Guinea, from the time that Germany had a colony there. When war broke out in Europe in 1914, Australia also declared war on Germany, invading the German colony in north-east New Guinea, and ending the supply of Papuan artefacts for German museums. An Australian returning from that horrendous war experience in Europe, may well have found solace in tropical New Guinea, and simply let the past go, to live in a dream. As years flowed by, the dream became real, and the past was blocked out by the nightmare of a war. The past may have become a strange dream, as the dreaming sun became life. And the postcard took its time, maybe stuck down the back of a shelf in a Post Office, then found, then delivered. You read can of mail delayed like that, for decades.
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