2. The Town I Loved So Well: Images of Gawler SA.

Dead Tree

Great grey galleon

against the golden morning sky

posts pigeons

in its ruined rafters

roots deep in Kaurna land

and centuries ancient

blackened by fire

before white settlement

still sailing

in silence and solitude

just before the disused railway bridge

fretting into the last century

re-leafed each morning

with a kind of sacredness.

Jeff Guess

A River Red Gum (eucalyptus camaldulensis) estimated to have died before white settlement in a bushfire still evident on its lower trunk.

©Jeff Guess 2017