Images on Holidays
 

"There has been no record of a failing of the light during the thirty years which it was in my charge"

- Henry Bates Ford

Lighthouse Keeper, Cape Otway, Victoria 1848-1878

The carpet of purple flowers

First trumpet their little martyrdoms

Across the wet concrete of summer

Before small steam makes a magic of the footpath.

Later in Apollo Bay

The God of beauty in men

Seems to have won the lighting tender with the local council :

Light from the new poled spots

Reflects the orange and white and red dinghies

On dark blue water - the colour of my car

Chopping these colours up together

Like an impressionist late at night

The colour of a cooling breeze

Late at night. A modern film would find the film

Of oil on the foreheads of a people

A loose grouping of people

Walking through this paradise

Because that's what you do in Paradise

Late in the evening, go fishing with your family,

Your girlfriend, your dog,

As if there were no trouble in the world

And which of us can say

That in our charge

In the whole of a working life

There has been no record

Of a failing of the light.