Ten Years Gone (Good-bye to All What?)

Curling photos of us

Raising cups of Cusquena

Or glasses of Guinness

Put away in boxes, in cupboards,

Cheap necklaces of beads

Long since broken,

My Russian ‘McLennin’s’ t-shirt

A forgotten rag.

Piece by piece

We have ceased to be travellers

Becoming other ‘ers’ by degrees

Workers, homeowners, grocery shoppers

Sunday morning gardeners and DIY’ers.

No more riding on tops of buses

Or the luggage racks of trains.

Or horses or camels or scooters.

Just packing the station wagon

For the Yorke Peninsula

Or my sister’s in Victoria

And dinners with old friends

Trying to remember who we were.