Splitting Wood with Terry

Realizing  it’s been six years
a final hospital visit, the Catholic ward
sitting in the lounge there, making a joke
about the Jewish guy being in the wrong place
before the fist of a different God.
Should we have told him, but let it drift
like the thin snow of morphine drizzling over
when to crack the green wood,
of not having had the time as friends
too busy with not being caught still
in a fading polaroid on a window sill.
As the cut becomes too hard for iron
you stopped playing at the heckle
of give it away baldy.
The fire’s smoking cleaning out the background;
engraved memories in laughter at how the gate at Boolara
confounded me but soothed
with the antidote of stacking.

How suddenly six years becomes twelve, and more than a decade passes. I was hand splitting timber in the only flat pull over at the old place, burning off some paddock debris, when this mostly formed in my mind on the spot back in 2014. Terry Monagle and I worked together in research and advocacy at the old VPSA back in the 80’s and nineties before and after he moved to our federal office. A well known and loved writer, sports journalist, Church reformer, tragic Collingwood fan, and a proud family man. A Humanist, conservationist, a founder of the AIEU, winner of the landmark EEO/Unfair Dismissal case which established precedent law, and a stalwart ally. He grew a pretty mean tomato too. A human with a fabulous sense of humour, irony, and true wit. Terry sort of came to terms with his God, particularly through Rumi and another philosophical/religious awakening. There are times when I wait for his comment, and that hiccup laugh, which usually meant approval. Or not.

Photo: Terry Monagle, 12/8/1946 – 10/7/2008.
Courtesy of Eureka Street

Splitting Wood with Terry first published in  ‘The Leviathan’s Apprentice’ 2015