November 8th, 2025Local Lines

Under Wisdom’s Tree

For our visitors killed in the Royal Hotel tragedy.

Not even dusk
And here was dark;
Hidden, as night and its secrets always are
Behind the broad bland brilliance of blue day,
These few hours of light, our brief glimmer
Guided in its moiling dance
By that old piper, the much-promising Sun.
Truth, and illusion, sitting at cards.

People
As people will, converging, eating,
Talking, drinking; sharing the air, sharing
Air’s warmth, its life, under Wisdom’s Tree.
Beneath their feet
The beautiful uncut hair of graves;
And there nearby, a few feet off, just a longish reach away
The bronzed body of childhood’s memory,
Its endless, ended, static forever…
Kali, Kali,
Rigorous Mother:
Under it all
Your inescapable Ouroboros,
Creation-deep earworm of your singing…
Under human voices, under Summer’s cicadas, under all
The sounds of warmth, life, hopes not yet made mist – all of which
Is also you,
Mother of Life
Mother of Death.

How do you weave yourself
So seamlessly, scentlessly, sightlessly
Into the predictable contours
Of our every day? Where you are not
Is always you…
None of us knew.
Not our guests, these welcome strangers;
Not us, their hosts, homesteaders here
In our small everywhere, the village of all our lives;
None of us knew
You’d stolen a ride, as you always do,
Invisible stowaway of every barque…

Not even dusk
And here was dark.

– Toby Sime

Toby Sime grew up in Daylesford, has written poetry since the age of eight, and was once described in the former Daylesford Advocate as a ‘local young ne’er-do-well’. Sime is no longer young, but his incorrigible versifying has ensured that he has indeed ne’er done well – a testament to journalistic perspicacity.

Local Lines features poetry by locals about local and any other matters.
Please submit poems to Bill Wootton at cottlesbreedge@gmail.com