Not quite poetry - the house of children

Not quite poetry…
The House of Children.
Swamp birds call over the aeons in the evening.
At the close of this year, 1992, I hear them.
My house is cool and smells of green growing in this twilight time.
Its walls are already over a century old and with luck
some woman will be sitting at this spot, near the window
one hundred years from now
listening to late summer birds call over time.
Maybe thats too ambitious - in this humid climate
the things of man don’t last all that long.
Mould grows quickly here, like everything.
My children grew quickly and are even now testing their wings
and looking to the horizon.

This house has a cool green light on summer evenings.
All its many doors are open to the many  breezes.
Gauzed verandahs surround it
and create a feeling of peace and space
around this lovely old, knocked around, lived in Australian home.
Its a house of children running in and out all its exits and entrances.
Children, now old men and women echo amongst the voices
of children yet to come,
and its all here, with me, now.
Its a house of laughter and of sadness; a house of peace.
It sits solid it seems and appears as haven in a stressed out, crazy world.

But yet... still the swamp bird calls as if to mock me with its call.
I have felt this before when I heard this bird ... have written it all down;
And yet again it calls into my heart and I see myself, infinite
greater than home and things;
but fragile, easily lost into the physical hope;
the emotional sludge and at times almost worshipping the acrobatics
of ‘tic - toc’ intellectualism.
The answer to the swamp bird’s call is in my heart.
Its old and young; seen and unseen.
This land dreams a dream more real than my reality.
And the things I like about my house in this time,
are only a part of my search for peace, laughter and truth.

Therese Mackay                    29/12/1992