SU N DAY, 14 DECEMBER 2025
Gallipoli Rosemary... Maureen Clifford © The #ScribblyBark Poet
Gallipoli Rosemary
The shells bursts were extensive as he flung himself defensive within a shallow hollow, face down 'neath a velvet sky. In khaki, soaked and dusty, wet with blood – metallic, rusty. Just hanging on for grim death as he didn’t want to die. With battle's roar and raging he quite expertly was gauging they hadn't made much progress. Johnny Turk had pinned them down. With pain excruciating he lay bleeding, tired and waiting for Simpson and his donkey and his last ride out of town. He woke as dawn was breaking, with cold and shock now shaking his wounded body, but his eyes still saw down on the shore bodies coloured red and khaki. All were still – then like the larks he began to sing soprano. Eulogies for those no more. He clutched a sprig there growing, what it was he wasn't knowing. He stuffed it in his pocket though he couldn’t tell you why. Two medics with a stretcher said “Just hang on mate we’ll getcha from here as quick as lightning - you’ll be home soon, by and by.” On bloody field of battle where the deadly bullets rattle he’d left one leg behind him that would be of use no more. He brought back to Australia little of his old regalia except that sprig of Rosemary plucked from that brutal shore. Now old – he’s back in Sydney, near the bridge where as a kid he would often lark about with mates who’d died upon that beach beneath those cliffs so fearsome. And on stormy nights he hears them as thunder and the lightning bring them back within his reach. Beside the front verandah somewhere near the Jacaranda, a bush brimful of blossoms - blue, like periwinkle skies. Its blooms are shed post-mortem, like his old mates were in Autumn . Rosemary from Gallipoli brings tears into his eyes.
Maggie Marriott's nom de guerre
Maggie Marriott
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