Pension Day In A City Park

Pension Day In A City Park

ARRIVING

In the heat city cauldron where nature's retreat

is a poor person's paradise for doddering feet,

shuffling their way along cracked concrete paths

to the central fountain's waterless baths,

beneath significantly ageing palms

the scene is set for old comrades at arms.

Though shadows are still short,

brown bagged bottles of port

mean their pensions been spent

and now they’re all hell bent

on cerebral bliss down alcohol way

in crossing the threshold there's no dismay,

for they drink and they drink

but they don't stop to think

not even one minute

or their minds won't be in it.

TELLING TALES

Yet the regulars know exactly their part

old Stumpy Jane plays the Kings Cross tart

for the boys from the front, back home on leave,

with flaunts and taunts she flatters to deceive.

While Tommy's Churchill, much maligned,

recounts brave battles from his fading mind,

like the African desert, the sands of his time

cover up the carnage, hide the reason and rhyme.

Like his namesake, Monty, a hero in tanks,

beloved both by officers and other ranks,

pounded by Rommel, the scenes he narrates,

weeps now in the death of his desert rat mates.

From Kokoda, Changi and the Burma trail

uniformed stories in turn they regale

of conditions so squalid and punishments tough,

where the bravest of brave said enough is enough,

gasped their last breaths bequeathed lessons to learn,

for survivors to lobby on their hero’s return,

swearing never to enter such theatres again,

but Nam features too, tinged with orange rain.

BED TIME

When liquor has finally quenched life's spark

they blend with the benches, its way after dark;

the lone wail of a siren, a stray dog's bark

the night time sounds of that warm city park

fade away in their bedroom, that great outdoors,

disregarding the signs, park covenants and laws

they now sleep their gift to a young generation,

in freedom they dream of Anzac veneration.

GOING HOME

But harsh, the noise of commuter intrusion

(that vision splendid was just an illusion)

wakes up the old statues from bedtime benches

their noses wrinkle at grog vomit stenches;

coughing and wheezing and blinking at light

sad city morning breakfast sight,

they farewell their bench mates

desert, jungle and trench mates

to return to the hovels, rewards of life past

having spent the pensions they wish were their last.