Analysis of Shearing Shed
Raised above the pebbled ground
a well-trodden floor now creaks.
A rusty iron roof, it aches,
the morning dew it leaks.
A swinging gate cries like a violin
without the many hands to soothe
its dry hinged high-pitched orchestral squeaks.
Where so much stillness now lives,
history forever speaks.
An eerie presence
within the dusty remnants of a shearing shed.
Fretting hooves of rams and ewes.
Anxiously they panted.
Often they bled.
To occupy the resting man’s muse,
river gums shade a bone-parched creekbed.
What soiled hard men once amused,
a city man would surely dread.
In morning Summer dawn
it clings to the whispers of those it stood to most.
Their beating proud hearts for a country
when wool was a country’s to boast.
No sweat.
No blood.
No flies as much today without their oily hosts.
No working dogs or stockmen.
No dripping canteens hang
from the time-worn ironbark posts.
No billycan is brewing tea
between the hours of a day's hard yakka.
No aroma of burnt tobacco.
No damper.
No golden fleece to sort
nor a humming bale press packer.
Lanolin stains the sorting racks.
History paints an era proud.
A breeze blows between the flooring cracks.
Yonder,
the Kookaburra through time
still laughs aloud.
Gone are the fires
with the crackle of gum leaves alight
and the scent of smoking redgum.
No snip of shears,
no laughter,
no jeers.
No more wild tales to sound the day is done.
Nostalgic pride fills the air
as dust dances through rays of light.
Where drought is wide and land is bare.
Where existence is never without its plight.
In the midst of relentless heat,
the shearing shed once bustled
with calloused men and their dusty flock.
Now a place of ghostly echoes.
Of a bygone time, it whispers.
Of the shearer
and the drover's woolly stock.
Gary M Dean
Scheme | ABBB CXBBB BDBXD BAXD XEFE XXBCGB FGXHXH BIBHJI BKJBHBX LKLK XAMBBHM X |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101011 0110111 01010111 010111 0101110001 01010111 111110101 1111011 1000101 11010 010101010101 1011101 100110 1011 11001011 10110111 1111101 01011101 010101 111010111111 110111010 1110111 11 11 111101011101 110111 110011 101111 111101 0101010111 10101101 110 110111 10101110 10010101 10011101 011010101 10 0111 1101 11010 101011101 0011101 1111 110 11 1111110111 0101101 11101111 11110111 10101100111 00110101 010111 110101101 10111010 1011110 1010 001101 1011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,808 |
Words | 370 |
Sentences | 36 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 5, 5, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 4, 7, 1 |
Lines Amount | 59 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 117 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 26 |
About this poem
Whilst traveling the hot dusty Australian countryside, from the time-weathered remains of the lonely shearing shed, the ghosts of history called out to me.
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"Shearing Shed" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/158788/shearing-shed>.
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