Vonda Stanley's collection of early Australian bush poems

 

 

On Ninety Mile Beach

(Between Broome and Port Hedland)

I saw three crosses in the dunes

Of driftwood, rough and brown,

And one leaned East, and one leaned West

And one had tumbled down.

One had a name cut with a knife,

The other two were bare;

Unless that name were written false

No lies at all were there---

No virtues posthumously hewed

Though hitherto ignored;

Stark humble as the Holy Rood

Was each unlettered board;

No promises to meet again,

Nor hints of future bliss---

Yet, as I set them plumb, I thought,

"There's not much now amiss!"

  Peter Hopegood