The YONNIE: A Bit Off The Bedrock of our Horizon

( To a red stone found broken off the hilltop bedrock in our family-farmyard )

For my six brothers: Melvyn, Daryl, Russell, Leighton, Craig & Quenten


Stone: remnant split egg of our land’s high fertility,
in a hilltop heritage of that big small-hold on a living
by family of wealth subsisting, in fierce love of a soil-
liberty, that we know also as slavery: held fast by toil.

As often is the globe, redder within than without,
as old earth-blood, rusted in - to be crumbled out,
is cavernous, hollowed out, yet softening at heart.
to grotto in paddocks in hope of incarnation’s art.

Suggesting a cave of making in a Spirit-plussed womb
out of the annunciation by the grain of a volcanic bomb
in old plateauing eruption: from that aboriginal peak tide
to the fruit of the metallic furnace of refining fire inside.

This is work’s every day dream! All skin refined as this here
Creator-Jeweller’s clay toss and spin, breaks down to a mere
self-mulching fertile soil. Our degradation is at best red dirt;
the enamel polish - our bite’s ache worn down to the hurt.

Yet as your offspring also receive the seeds we bring
our flesh also wells up, growing a hope sexed up to sing!
As dividing mountains paint their art-walls on our horizon -
Cooeed up with all the immortal longing of mortal men.

As you would, I throw you, meaning us (and me) as it,
On target, this rock, this ‘Yonnie’, aimed as best I can,
A target as I choose, hard and high, and to see it land
So I my works can be. See! Let it prove it’s own hit.

Written in and of the Stony Creek Valley, Burleigh, (Silvan South), Victoria
2002 © Wayne David Knoll