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POETRY COMPETITION
Our poetry competition has now
HIGHLY COMMENDED
closed and has been judged. Congratulations to the winners. The judges were most impressed with the number and standard of entries. Judging was by suitably qualified literary specialists. The winner of the competition is Elizabeth Gooding with her poem, Old. The judges comments were as follows:-’The sentiments are sincere, choice of words is appropriate and economical.’ Elizabeth receives a cheque for $100 as first prize.
Three other poems were highly commended. They each received a $20 publication fee. They were John Morrow’s poems The Tree House and Spring (published in issue 113) and Melva Stott’s Emu Doggerel.
OLD How old are you? Not very—not old at all. At seventeen I saw my grandmother, with wrinkles and slow gait glasses and soft white powder. She was eighty and ancient. At thirty-five it was my mother at the middle age of sixty-two, with a full round body, jowls and flabby arms Who made me think of old. Now I’m fifty one tired, too busy, unfit, and in my face I see those other two old women. So do others. ‘You’re like your mother,’ they say and its true. Elizabeth Gooding
THE TREE HOUSE There’s an old abandoned tree-house half hidden in a tree the rotten ladder missing rungs the trapdoor long since seized the corrugated iron roof has rusted out and leaks hear it grating in the wind four limbs around it creak
it’s in an ancient stringybark timbers warped and grey the children who commissioned it have grown and gone away high tea parties are over now a broken cup and saucer and teddy bear are lying there bereft of son and daughter it’s old and frail and falling down forgotten in the leaves still cradling in empty arms the ghosts of make believe John Morrow
Continued
OPTOMETRIST and
Contact Lens Practitioner
FRANK DENAHY B.App.Sc. L.O.Sc. Anglesea Osteopathy Clinic 4/103 Great Ocean Road, Anglesea
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