Clare Valley, South Australia
 

On a winter afternoon
the town of Clare reminded me of Ohakune.
As evidence I offered the purple sky,
the silence of old stone and         altitude.

Its Taihape, you said.
You pointed to empty shops and a window full of R M Williams.

When we saw Lake Torrens,
I told you I had an uncle called Jimmy Torrens.
I tried to remember the names of my father’s Irish uncles
and you talked about a schoolteacher, sent to Whanganui for her health
and this is how we went on

until we arrived at the Modern Open-Cut        mine,
which started just after the famine.

The cold wind there made my eyes water.
You said nothing either.

©Lynn Jenner