The Ballad of a Horse Named Bunting

Joseph thought back to the moment before

Where windows were open but nowhere a door

He took off his hat and stared at the floor

And said 'Yessir, the horse it be mine'

The colt had been found in a garden on East

Snipping at roses with lips and a fleece

Was inflicted upon the swan slim pretty pieces

Of Mrs Bevanderbern’s garden

The horse was a rusty bemottled slow red 

With bespoke snowy markings across his forehead

The less said about his short temper ,t’ less said

For his temper was worse for the saying

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He seemed to possess an implacable verve

For perceiving the subtleties mostly reserved 

For the minds of his masters, always unnerved

By the knowing-ness gilding his eye

 

Joseph had been in the courtroom before

The horse had near cost him a month’s wage or more

For pinching a cauliflower outside the store

Of the Sullivan’s Grocery Market 

Born into this world with a poetic gaze, 

The Muster Boy hoped it was only a phase

He’d seen this before in a horse named Blaze 

But everyone knew he was crazy 

His Ma was a pony of Welsh mountain brand

Traced ocean blue wilderness right to the sand

Came off the boat with a Sea Shanty band 

and a hand worth the last drop of whiskey.

 

And mountains were home to our colt as he grew

Sage green and wattle, deep frost and clear dew

Joe was his master, the best man he knew

 And together they worked on the land

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Great Storm

 

It was nearly November just after the spring

The fences on Bakker’s ridge needed fixing

The man and the horse worked them round 
in a ring

But Joe wasn’t counting them down

The sky was concocting a sobering brew

Black in the east and the sun had gone too

The Gods threw a flash and the currawongs flew

And the safest place now was inside

Joe knew the storm was a proper tree belter

The cattle would move to the ridge for shelter

Giddy and frightened they’d run helter skelter

The fences they had to be done

They say that a man can never quite know

When it will come, his time to go

Bunting stood steady and strong beneath Joe

At the sound of an ear splitting crack

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A pain it had started in Bunting’s left side

It ripped through his flesh and tore through his hide

He knew it was flowing from somewhere inside 

And the waters they rose like a flood

The Old Gum still, gnarled, bone cracking, 
hell leaden 

Lay across Joe like a stairway to heaven

Joe reached up to Bunting, his nose like a glove 

On the back of the broken man’s hand

Bunting made town with the man on his back

Jo was slumped in the saddle, the reins had gone slack

The horse stopped at the courthouse right there in his tracks

And the women came running and fussing

And when he was sure that his master safe

In the hands of Miss Harcourt and Reverend O’Keefe

He walked steadily on to the grassy high place 

Knowing his time was to die

 

 

Now Joseph breaks horses in down in the Valley

Some colts from abroad and a mustang called Sally

Fourteen new Brumbies were on the last tally

The wilder the better he says.