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Emus

Edward S. Sorenson

When home was just a lonely bark caboose,
    And virgin forests hemmed the homestead rise,
Where curlews set the weirdest fancies loose
    In witching hours of night with eerie cries,
            The emus came to see
            What that queer place could be,
    And strode around it with inquiring eyes.

The splitter’s thudding maul, resounding far,
    The clang of wedges in the riven log.
The thumping of the fencer’s iron bar,
    The axe-strokes muffled in the morning fog,
            The crosscut’s swish and hum
            In ironbark and gum—
    All these were sounds that set those birds agog.

Plainly they queried “What is that?” and soon
    From camping-mound and feeding-ground they’d go,
And where and while the billy boiled at noon,
    Like mannequins parading to and fro,
            They’d slowly strut and pry.
            With solemn heads flung high,
    And sometimes with a banded brood in tow.

‘Twas grand to see them speeding through the grass,
    Their shaking tails and tufts so quaintly loose;
‘Twas grand to see a quiet procession pass,
    Each statuesque, though stupid as a goose;
            And aye ‘twas good to hear
            Their drumming through the year,
    When home was just a lonely bark caboose.

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