Bucolic Colic

[Stephen Whiteside]

Bucolic Colic

The gall bladder waits a little while
Before delivering its bile;
Waits a while beyond each meal
Before it closes out the deal
By squirting bile into the bowel.
Bile is green and rather foul,
But has a most important role
Each time you eat a casserole.

It helps your body break down fat.
You can't complain that it does that,
But you will groan and you will moan
If it precipitates to stone
And blocks the common bile duct.
Then you'll be completely compromised.
The pain is truly most severe,
And strikes your body like a spear.

The bile damming up behind
The stone, you'll very quickly find,
Will stain your eye-balls and your skin
Bright yellow. It will all begin
Quite subtly. As it gathers steam
You'll think it's all a dreadful dream.
Relief from such a sickly tone
Depends on passing out the stone.

Now, you might say, in language terse,
These lines are simply not bush verse;
They're wretched doggerel infernal
Suited to a doctor's journal,
But that's all. To which I say
(And in a most impassioned way!)
That drovers in a scene bucolic
Aren't immune from bouts of colic.

Now, you might huff and you might puff,
You never heard about this stuff
From Banjo P or Henry L,
Who never shied away from Hell
(Well, maybe Banjo did a bit,
Buy Henry didn't, not a bit);
CJD and Wille O
Avoided this scenario;

John O'B and Henry K
Didn't have a lot to say
About it, nor did ALG,
And yet I say, defiantly,
That starving shearers and their like
Were not the only ones to strike
In 91 and 94.
You'd catch them writhing on the floor

At times if you could somehow view
Their times, for it is nothing new;
It isn't just a modern gripe
To have a stone wedged in your pipe.
Nor is it a city thing
To have a stone jammed in that ring
Of muscle at the duodenum.
Ancient ills? You should have seen 'em!

No, this is bush verse, quite legit.
Ask some bloke who's had a fit
Of pain, upon a horse, at work,
Way out beyond the back of Bourke;
Ask some shearer in a shed
Who reckons he'd be better dead
Than have to suffer, once again,
Such excruciating pain.

The poets do not write of this.
They tend to focus on the bliss
Of country life in sand or snow
(Excepting Henry, yes, I know,
But even Henry doesn't write
Of pain that makes you deathly white).
"You've made your point!" I hear you curse.
Just don't say it's not bush verse.

Stephen Whiteside 26.03.2014

[Neville Briggs]

Made my eyes water.ooow....

[r.magnay]

...excellent Stephen..the poem not the pain....having been struck down with gout on a remote community I completely concur with what you write!...

[Heather]

Makes having a baby seem like a piece of cake really....

[Stephen Whiteside]

Thanks, Ross. Hope I manage to avoid that one.

Don't know about childbirth, Heather, but I reckon it would have to be right up there...

[Heather]

Oh it is Stephen, it is. I don't know why we do it really....

[Vic Jefferies]

But then women do it again and sometimes again and again and again and again..
You'd reckon once would be more than enough!

[Heather]

It's all a huge trick Vic. You take home a dear little bub who gets cuter by the day but they never warn you that it will turn into a teenager! If we had teenagers first we would never have any more!

[Vic Jefferies]

Use to be the trouble with girlfriends was that they turned into wives.

[r.magnay]

...I'm pretty sure if you had a teenager first time Heather, there would be no more, regardless of how they behaved....