Francis Duggan Farmers Poems

On a beautiful late February evening of twenty six degrees
White butterflies seemingly dancing in the warm coastal breeze
That blow through the parkland from the nearby bay
So great to be living on such a nice day
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To the young and the frail mercy they never show
The bane of sheep farmers the silver back crow
Of newly born lambs they do pluck out the eyes
Which to the anger of farmers understandably gives rise
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For Australian farmers a poor financial year
Of the woes that beset them we read of and of hear
Of locust and mouse plagues and flooding and drought
In the age of Climate Change among the rural community of a future in farming much doubt
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Perhaps it is their idea of a Winter holiday
In Illowa in Winter for a few months for to stay
Around the herds of cattle they spend their days
Eating insects disturbed by the big beasts as they graze
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For the farmers of Australia Summer is not much fun
Working in their paddocks in the heat of the sun
With bush flies around their mouth and their eyes and on their hands, face and hair
And buzzing around them in the warm humid air
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It is a bleak Season for farmers with climate change and livestock prices down
Some of them have sold what they can sell and moved to live and to find jobs in the town
For many of them the rains have come too late climate change affecting everywhere
Global warming is in every Country in the bigger World out there
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