Australia Day (170 of 365)

Day 170 of the 365 day poem challenge.

Word of the day ubiquitous meaning: "being present everywhere at once."

Australia Day

The harbour with its trees 

Lush and bent by the speakers

Of boat and the surge of sunscreen slacked tourists

From the spit to Manly

Proud blue seafarer flags

Of seafaring people's 

Of a tribe pale and sunburnt

The ambling crowds gyrate in the muds at low tide playing their

Primitive ball and stick games

Yelling names and rhymes

Drinking their drink and spewing

Their stories and children all

Over the sand

The tiny strips of green are lost

In the proud paraphernalia of red white and blue 

That heralded the ships

That alienate some

Somewhere else somewhere less peaceful and full of the blue water

Blue flags, blue sea and blue settlers on the crisp green turf

March others waving other flags

The ones who were here first

I wonder how much more crowded 

those strips might become if the divided were to commingle

If the yells and shouts began to blur and disappear into each other

If the mad flag waving and sunburn

Covered both camps in sweat and flies 

Or maybe instead there would be deafening silence a death to fun sort of silence a death to innocence sort of silence

A death to something proud and unassuming 

But then I return to the present

The White bodies of the young and the old, the baby and the bald,

The muscles and the tubular, the wrinkled and the smooth, the course speakers and the loud speakers, the mouse talkers and the whispers, the splashers and the starers, the pushers and the jumpers

Sitting on picnic blankets

On floaty fortresses

On rich decadent boats

In decaying houseboats

On green green grass

Under shade 

And the fun and the music

The countdown, the proud sermons of the young and the sound of coming together 

All continue unabashed

Ubiquitous 

And more than 200 years old.