Winnipeg in Winter

Winnipeg in winter, is not the place to be

When the wind is up to thirty knots – and its minus twenty three

And all around a sea of white, snow drifts and sheets of ice

Frozen lakes, high latitudes don’t make for  paradise

Freezing, fevered, snowbound – I’m sitting all alone

In Winnipeg in winter, ten thousand miles from home

Summertime is beautiful, so the locals say

I’m not convinced to press my luck, and stay another day

Instead of this white wilderness, I see the big red heart

Purple hills and spinifex - I’m ready to depart

Brown and yellow’s on the fields, a harvest’s coming in

Sweaty seat, the Inter truck, Kellerberrin bin

And all along the gravel roads, lines of eucalypts

Dance and shimmer in the heat – and make the light of it

“There” an azure ocean, laps a golden beach

A little line of breakers, is curling out of reach

Majestic stands of karris and ghostly river gums

Throw their shade at red-brown dirt - ‘til evening’s blanket comes

Of this distant dreaming, it’s not hard to make some sense

When from a fresh-cut field of oats, or along a barbed-wire fence

Dust clouds spiral sky-wards, you’d pause and take a guess

“It’s forty in the water bag” - more or less

Stooped against the driving snow, hail the brave Canuck

Wrapped up in fur and feathers – shuffling through the muck

Tugging at the parka hood, he nods and says “G’day”

Breaking links to a train of thought – ten thousand miles away

Winnipeg in winter, is not the place to be

When the wind is up to thirty knots, and its minus twenty three

And all around a sea of white, snow drifts and sheets of ice

Frozen lakes, high latitudes don’t rate with paradise

Freezing, fevered, snowbound, I’m sitting all alone

In Winnipeg in winter, ten thousand miles from home

Winnipeg in Winter: A. Mann

Alan Mann’s home thoughts from abroad! These words were conjured up sitting in a Canadian airport in winter, knowing that in Western Australia it was summer, and the temperature was probably close to forty degrees.  That realisation resulted in the  associated images of the landscapes and farming activities.