Clouds in the valley...

  I look outside the moving bus As always – the second window seat from the last A bridge of steel floats above Just as days from a distant past   The harbour waters shimmer in blue A luxury cruise has moored nearby This is but a different world Until, I look above and give a sigh   The girders grey warp in time To a different bridge on a river wide Below - dirty city, with waters grey But a home beckons, with maternal pride   Where everyday, I’d cross the bridge On Ganges in but Hooghly’s guise Two bustling worlds on swelling banks Sleepless, sunset or sunrise   A flower market here, a station there, As cranky ferries snake around Where grey waters merge with greyer skies The world bursts forth with a zillion sound   The offices remind of days from the Raj Esplanade’s there, not faraway Strand road’s memory chokes with fumes The city of Joy had so much to say   Only that, we never stayed Long...

  Far beyond these Sisters three Are sistrens many more, So ancient that, we’ve lost a lot Of this old earth and her lore   For, beyond the tourist tales that stop At Katoomba’s vantage scarp, Song-lines start from an older age, And time begins to warp   Taking us to an antique past, When bunyips roamed our land, And thylacines were sketched on rock By the wise melanic hand   The same hand wrote these songs to guide Pilgrims to far-off trails, To scale million miles through desert sands And crumbling hills and vales   And songline paths criss-crossed this land Landmarks on every page, Mental maps for this ancient land Passed down from age to age.   They say, Katoomba’s sisters are the start For a songline to the west, To the Kimberley plains and Pilbara At the far end of this quest Six thousand kilometres in a song To Karijini’s petroglyphs, The land, they say, where it all began The harbour to...

‘Choo, choo’ the engine sounds Here starts the wizened train, ‘Choo. Choo’ again it hums And we’re lost in time again   A cloud of steam engulfs us all, As if a tunnel unto time, Can you smell the burning coal and smoke? Can you feel the sooty grime?   For a hundred years, these engines rolled And hurtled on these hills, Their echoes sound even today Their roar, the valley fills   As Whitton’s dream conquered the Blues, The little colony grew, Engines of steam traversed the land – Earthy, red and new   And tracks of iron forged these hills In these ancient lands, a scar As locomotives sped past zig-zag hills To Katoomba and afar     With changing times, the old gives way For new roads and rails to grow Though plenty clues are to be found If you run a little slow   Of the older times, the Age of Steam When the hills were conquered all, A mural here, a memoir there – Or rolling stock upon ...