The Diaries.

The Diaries.

They wrote of the dew-drops shiny,

On the paddock fence wire in the morning.

They wrote of the cirrus clouds skimming,

Across the azure skies at the dawning.

They waxed on about the magpies lyrically carolling,

And didn’t leave out the cows on the green grass a’lowing.

There’s the pictures of the churches,

There’s the pictures of the schools,

With the dozen or so children smiling,

Barefoot, dressed in patched hand-me-down clothes.

Such are the entries random in family history books,

Listed, collated, approved, for inquisitive public seek,

Old pioneer diaries splendid, of work, childbirth, wealth.

Those sombre faces staring, stoic, emotionless, aloof.

But who will write of the hand-wringing,

From the worry of filling a cupboard bare,

The tears wretched of a birth gone so wrong,

The burial near the church in that picture there,

The hand on the shovel, at a grave of one so young,

Of what will break the spirit, even one so strong.

But they tell us THIS is history; the mechanics of the thing,

Time, dates, names..simplicity to explain everything,

But who will explain the persons, shown in the pictures there,

Should they turn their face to you,

And ask; “What do you know of us..

How we lived, what was the want and care?”

For THAT is the task of the story-teller,

To write the other diary, to give those people their due.

To take that span of time, place, experience,

Compress it into a “here and now”..the “me and you”.

Wipe away the fiction of “that is history”,

Wrapped in the mist of time, people of mystery,

For those folk so long gone are our family, our kind,

And so too are their fears, happiness, state of mind.

So next time those “who know”, talk of history,

Talk of time, place, machinery..of grand ol’ days of yore..

Remind them that the hands that worked the levers there,

Were part of a people whose complexity, merited oh so much more.