An Amazon of Wattle Flows To Christmas
"It's the Wattle River -no,
river is too small a term, unless
you say Amazon, and imagine
an Amazon a continent wide.
Well, the Wattle River rises
in Queensland about, say May every
year, and it flows in foaming golden crest
on crest through June and New South Wales,
and July and Riverina, and August and September
and Victoria, trickling through every valley
and every day, and lapping every mountain side,
and disregarding even the sea, plashes and tumbles,
and leaps and rolls over October and Tasmania and
November and December, until it reaches Christmas
and the Pacific and sends back over its course
such an echo of its memory, that we long
and linger for the promise of the echo,
that its rising time will soon return.
* * *
- Bernard O'Dowd (1866-1953) Australian white-collar poet, radical parliamentary draughtsman, educator and activist bureaucrat, journalist and author of several books of law and poetry - from 'Fantasies' (Melbourne, 1942) p.7
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