Fully Employed Now
Humanity keeps looking forward, toward the coming of a birth,
and we’re all deemed as equals on our first day on this earth,
but as the years go quickly by our lives become our own;
we’re seen as individuals that Mother Nature cannot clone.
And so it is through schooling years our lives begin to vary,
our genes are coming to the fore and change is often scary,
gaps amid the scholar and the dunce begin to broaden to extent,
and so dreaming for professional life is where some will lament.
This country needs the educated for decisions that are made,
and also need the craftsmen once apprenticed with a trade.
We also need the labourer, who bends his back; prepared to sweat,
but we’ve also got a small percent that most of us forget.
They’re not lawyers, teachers, managers - they’re not in this class,
but they’re not dole bludgers either; they will not sit on their a***.
Alas there’s no co-ordination; their thoughts can’t be relied upon.
Everything they touch turns sour - and then further back - comes Don.
Now men like Don with all their ilk will always try to do their best.
They’ll do a multitude of courses but by now you should have guessed,
from the thousand hours spent at TAFE in rooms where Don meandered,
sadly handed Don his test results classed as not up to standard.
Now there’s days of sheer frustration with the message loud and clear,
psychology’s deleted off his board, and Psychiatry must disappear.
Therapists who fail are off the list so human helpfulness escapes,
but the computer giving out results suggested Don go picking grapes.
The mention from this latest glitch is like a red rag to a bull,
there’s no way he’s picking grapes and he won’t go classing wool,
Don made his point that he’s too old for scratching through the dirt,
so TAFE will have Don once again; so TAFE’S on high alert.
But just by chance a study crew stopped here to spend the night.
They are based at Melbourne Uni and they heard about Don’s plight.
They put to Don a proposition; no learned man would dare refuse,
leaving Don without an option and without a need to choose.
They are heading to North New South Wales and maybe further west,
in search of endangered mammals which are numbered few at best.
Don was their new employee who would make their cups of tea,
while they made these odd discoveries that human’s rarely see.
So amongst the naturalist’s, ecologists, and scientists in the field,
Don was to make his mark when finding something quite concealed,
here in this land of pastel colour with its harshest dry terrain,
Don swore he saw two Green-lipped Taipans and was deemed to be insane.
For the green-lipped Taipan Don has claimed, he noticed in a gully bed,
was scorned on by a Uni scientist who derided Don and said,
“Yes, the Green-lipped Taipan did exist; we have a skeleton on show,
but what you claim as what you saw, died out five hundred years ago.”
But from his thousand hours held in TAFE and being told his standards poor,
Don learnt to fight these lecturers who forced his back against the door,
and so around the campfire late at night a strong debate did tend to thrive,
based on Don’s assumption - the Green-lipped Taipans still survive.
And the only way one scientist said, was to seek out local knowledge,
where the only local people here had never been to any college,
for elders hold the keys of history, through generations they are linked,
so they’re the ones who will declare if this Taipan is extinct.
The message it was frightening from the people who should know,
as they retold a dreamtime message from a thousand years ago
on how the vicious Green lipped Taipan; a snake too evil to describe,
would slide into the camps at night and wipe out tribe after tribe.
They know the Green lipped Taipan for some reason disappeared,
but no one knows why the decline for something fierce and feared,
but the elders have assured us that the species does survive,
and that somewhere in the gorge - there are two that’s still alive.
And so the talk around the campfire turned to hopefulness and glee,
for this expedition now will give these scientists a degree.
With this discovery so paramount toward a specie thought was gone.
But while they slapped each other’s back - no one had mentioned Don.
The celebrating through the night became the first of their mistakes,
with the first of problems not fulfilled; they had yet to find the snakes.
And deeply brooding in the background was a man whose glory bound;
he knows where the snakes are hiding, so he knows where they’ll be found.
With a shoebox and a fork stick Don ensued to start the chase,
so to all those academics out there there’s one more they’ll soon embrace,
for the species ‘Oxyuranus’ which is the Taipans Latin name,
will be followed now with ‘Donnus’ - which Don is ready to proclaim.
But alas the Green lipped Taipan; well hidden deep in mystery,
should have been a learn-ed lesson from the dreamtime history.
Those green lips dashed across the sandstone like an arrow on its path,
with Don sprinting like an athlete for he feared the aftermath.
Don was screaming out a warning and these snakes he did condemn,
but the scientists thought that they were listening to the station HOT FM,
until they saw the cruelest moments for the snakes had reached their prey;
Don was tackled by the Green lipped Taipans and was losing in the fray.
It was the twist of coiling bodies taking toll on poor Don’s heart.
Ferociously he’s struck with angled fangs before the snakes depart.
The aftermath was filled with shock and Don was traumatized with pain,
as both the snakes recoil their heads; prepared to strike again.
Don’s arm that’s pierced and flowing blood displayed his anguish now.
His face was like an Arctic suntan; sweat was flowing off his brow.
The scientists observing this event for a moment were dumbstruck,
but turned from Don who’s quite distressed and cursed their rotten luck.
So instead of giving Don first aid and calling Doctors on the phone,
they blasphemed Don with angry words and left him on his own.
Where venom coursed throughout the body that no human had defied …
yet Don was making his recovery - but both the snakes had died.
Now for all the schooling that he’s done, not up to standard at the TAFE,
Don’s finally found employment with a job that’s really safe …
whenever snakes are causing problems and there’s need to ‘euthanize,’
Don’s arm is sought across this country - and the snake it surely dies.
Copyright ©
Lindsay Laurie
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