© Jim Tonkin

Events that happen in our younger days can sometimes stay with us throughout our lives.This poem also shows the effects of the Vietnam War and our attitude towards teenage pregnancy in the 60s.The poem begins in a cemetery in Sydney.

A socialite’s funeral up in the big smoke
didn’t seem like a place for this old country bloke.
Blue jeans that were faded, an old worn checked shirt
RM riding boots that were half covered in dirt.

Who was this old bloke?What a cheek to come here.
He looked dirty and scruffy and smelt of stale beer.
He stood back from the crowd as the preacher then told
of this woman’s great deeds, caring for young and old.

Of drug addicts in Cabramatta, of bashed whores in the street,
Those dying AIDS patients and rape victims she’d meet.
She’d worked at the coalface, seen life’s down and-outs.
Druggos hanging for a fix and speed fired drunken louts.

Been in the social pages, raising money for the needy
Running posh gala events, parting money from the greedy.
But his mind wanders back to another time when,
He knew this young girl from way down Cedar Glen

Long, curly, red hair that flowed in the breeze
as she galloped her grey pony over hills and through trees.
With fiery green eyes, youthful, honest, wide smile
rode their ponies together country mile after mile.

And their friendship had deepened, love blossomed and grew
and the beauty of first love, came upon these young two.
How they talked and they laughed, as young lovers with a yen
planning a future together, down in Cedar Glen.

Then one day she was gone, her mother wouldn’t say where
the girl with fiery, green eyes and long, red, curly hair.

Broken hearted and lost, turned his talents to crime.
Spent the rest of his youth in gaol serving time.
At nineteen, conscription put a gun in his hand.
Sent him off to kill people, in a far Asian land.

A loud mine explosion on a remote jungle track
took part of his legs and left shrapnel in his back.
Sent him home with the pension, scars on the inside.
The nightmares and screaming, never took him abride.

As they lowered the coffin into that deep earthy hole
a tear ran down his cheek, tearing deep at his soul.
He turned to walk away, his eyes welling with tears
feeling very much older than his sixty-one years.

“Excuse me,” he heard as he made his way out.
“Excuse me!” again, she was starting to shout.
“You look familiar.” she said as she looked in his face.
“Do I know you from some-one or maybe some-place?”

A woman about forty-five, long, red hair and green eyes.
as he looked at his face she must have seen his surprise.
‘Twas like looking in a mirror, facial features the same.
“I’m Billy from Cedar Glen,” as he gave her his name.

“Never seen you before,” as he bid her good day.
Streaming tears down his face nearly gave him away.
A red rose and a note, written with shaky pen
Reads, “with fondest of love, Billy of Cedar Glen.”

Now he lives with his memories and remembers back then
when young love was blooming down in Cedar Glen.