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Patricia Prime

Homestead

The land has been sold. Still standing, surrounded by houses, is the homestead where you were born and were married. Art sculpture on the porch, paintings and photographs decorate the rough stone walls of the hallway. There's an oak table whose grain you know by touch.

Beside the guest bed a simple vase of lavender � a splash of purple on taut green stems and you as much a still life as the apples in a bowl or the books on the coffee table.

In this tableau the painted sun hangs above the Kamai and the river meanders below the bridge.

New neighbours gather for cocktail parties, garden clubs, scrapbooking and cake decorating.

farmland
where I fed
the horses
with dandelions
while you milked cows

�fairy� pine
beneath which we wrote
poems together
and trailed our fingers
through wildflowers

home paddock
through which bullocks
chased us
one cold wet day
in late spring