Perhaps it was earlier the previous year when I realised how much Australian poetry meant to me, and how I miss it. I cannot really remember the year, except I know it was Johannesburg winter. As the wind hardly blew in that fair City of Gold except in winter; the sad moaning at my lonely bedroom door; the middle-night’s absolute dark, and the urgent need for another blanket. So, I think it was because this city is rather quaint – in so many ways -Henry Lawson’s “the storms of olden times” (nd) then came to mind. As dry, dusty, scratching of branches on the window-pane, added further elements of my remembered musings; of familiar words; phrases; of my own vernacular; so out of my current reach, and so much missed, I decided to get over my silly and trivial “absent woman’s shame” (nd), to walk out in “the wings of the tempest”, see just what Josi weather was up to that night.  With a doona wrapped round me, through thrashing trees I saw an ink-blue sky with a Southern Cross and the Milky way, both brilliant – from a different aspect. So I could not gain the indigenous Arnhem Land story-idea of the shark, who chases the stingray through the sea of the sky; all those stars are bubbles they raise in their urgent journey. I felt more at home, then, and so returned to my bed, and to dreamless slumber.

Title: EXPAT

Perhaps it was earlier the previous year when I realised how much Australian poetry meant to me, and how I miss it. I cannot really remember the year, except I know it was Johannesburg winter. As the wind hardly blew in that fair City of Gold except in winter; the sad moaning at my lonely bedroom door; the middle-night’s absolute dark, and the urgent need for another blanket. So, I think it was because this city is rather quaint – in so many ways -Henry Lawson’s “the storms of olden times” (nd) then came to mind. As dry, dusty, scratching of branches on the window-pane, added further elements of my remembered musings; of familiar words; phrases; of my own vernacular; so out of my current reach, and so much missed, I decided to get over my silly and trivial “absent woman’s shame” (nd), to walk out in “the wings of the tempest”, see just what Josi weather was up to that night.  With a doona wrapped round me, through thrashing trees I saw an ink-blue sky with a Southern Cross and the Milky way, both brilliant – from a different aspect. So I could not gain the indigenous Arnhem Land story-idea of the shark, who chases the stingray through the sea of the sky; all those stars are bubbles they raise in their urgent journey. Then I felt more at home, and so returned to my bed, and to happy, dreamless slumber.

Reference: Lawson, H. (n.d.). The Star of Australasia.
from: https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/lawson-henry/the-star-of-australasia-0002025