13/05/2026
A Poem From one of our Members
(Back Story - All three of my daughters love their dogs. My youngest Grace suffered some medical issues as a toddler that caused her so much distress, she pulled all the hair from one side of her head. We tried everything to get her to leave it alone, and finally the solution came in the form of Bernie, her own little Foxie who never left her side, except to come for morning walks with me.)
BERNIE AND THE KANGAROO
My daughter’s foxie Bernie, like a rabbit on the run,
took off to chase a kangaroo beneath the morning sun.
I didn’t bother yelling, Bernie’s got that dog’s disease,
where instinct takes him over when a scent floats on the breeze.
The Kangaroo, a female, performed a pirouette,
and bounding for the nearby lake she launched herself, a jet,
up, out across the water, splashing down, she gave a spin,
and caught my silly little mate as he came skidding in.
She squeezed him with her two front paws and boxed his pointy ears.
Poor Bernie, faithful foxie, who had seen some better years,
went flipping like a rag doll, until she pushed him down
underneath the murky surface, where he began to drown.
My kelpie bitch beside me, pricked her ears, then barked, and flew
around the lake, which must have caused that female kangaroo
to shift a bit, but just enough, to lose her lethal grip,
and Bernie broke the surface like a long-lost pirate ship.
He didn’t hang about, mind you, he scrambled to the side,
and shook himself then ran to me, leapt in my arms and cried.
I ruffed him up and scolded him. “That’s what you get,” I said.
Some foolish dogs cannot be saved, their graves are by the shed.
Now, when I offer up this yarn, my friends, and readers too,
appear relieved that tiny Bernie somehow made it through.
But I insist they stop to hear the murmur of the land,
as Mother Nature shares Her version, surely twice as grand.
Where poetry in motion gallops through each beating breast,
across this untamed country where mankind is but a guest,
where creatures hide, uneasy, down a slim bush corridor,
as our civilized incursion, encroaches, more, and more.
I paused, you know, that morning, after Bernie’s lucky scrape,
as squawking cockatoos let fly, applauding his escape.
Trumpets bellowed from the treetops. To herald his acclaim?
Why, no! It was that Kangaroo they ushered into frame.
’twas her they celebrated, as she curtsied to the lake,
a Queen, returned from battle, I stood silent in her wake,
where right and wrong, and life and death, are fickle things, and frail,
like that Joey, peeking from her pouch that told another tale.
- Marco Gliori
