My Santiago

But when he speaks, His lean syntax is laced with meaning.

He has stories going back in time, In a life richly lived; events that exist only In government archives.

Bill tells me about the Lebanese man, Unhinged and confused, Who shot dead his Captain, With an army issue .303, On the cricket field, At the Adelaide Railway grounds In ‘52, And how Bill escaped because he understood ‘shooters’.

About his brush with sporting fame, When he went into combat against the legends of the MCC, Bedser, Compton and Tyson.

He talks without complaint about his hip, his corn, And about the pointlessness of podiatrists at Boolaroo.

Bill may spend long hours in wordless silence, Surrounded by his ‘stray’ but fed cats, Bunches of overripe summer grapes, Hulking dead machinery, And vistas of the Ranges around him.

And my wife sheds a tear when we leave, Brief visit, Too short, by far.

But Bill smiles his boyish smile, Thanks us and shakes our hands.

In our departing dust, I look back through the rear-view mirror, And see Bill, Waving.