The drovers wife

Two famous writers in Australian history have written stories about the Dover's Wife. I have been thinking the past couple of days of how to write a poem about the Drovers wife to match up with my poe

The Drover’s wife is as iconic as the Drover himself
She led a hard life, often alone for months on end
She lived often, beyond the horizon
With nothing to relieve the eye from the desert

Away with the sheep or cattle
His wife and children were here alone
In a hut built of timber, and bark
A floor of slabs of wood, sometimes dirt
A kitchen at one end, often bigger than the house
A veranda all round

She often coped with her children alone
She was thin and with skin that had hardened to the conditions
Often dealing with snakes, dogs, possums
Frighten children at times of thunderstorms

Alone at midnight, with the children asleep
She sews patches on boys trousers, mends aprons
Sometimes reading by the lamp
Sometimes dreaming of another life
Sometimes anxious of news of her husband

She was not a coward, but she can be frightened
Chasing snakes, thunderstorms, children
She the Drovers wife is a survivor
She is used to being alone, making do

As a girl she had dreams
Girlish dreams, of castles,
Knights in shining armour
Those dreams all but vanished now
As a Drovers wife

Today she finds excitement
In an old magazine Ladies’s Journal
An old one at that
Images of ladies dressed in all their finery

Her husband an Australian, and so is she
They were used to separation, when he is paid
He comes home and gives her most
Used to not fretting, she gets on
Gone is her finery, gone is her soft skin

She fights fires, she fights floods,
The woman now from the bush
A drovers wife, lays down her work,
Listens, thinks, and stares out a window
The drovers wife.

Reviews

[paddy d daly]

very poignant and lonely too, you have painted a picture in my mind.