Adelaide River War Cemetery
Bones of Polly Mop or Mine

below

the last plaque on the grass.

Blasted into death,

there’s now no flesh

but her still fresh name

has stopped me.

Fourteen runes I read

‘POLLY MOP OR MINE’.
Her secrets buried deeper

than JF Simon’s,

Corporal, twenty,

whose familiar letters

burn bullet hot in the tropic glare

but tonight will share with Polly

all the grave black air

beneath a clouded moon —

his too soon death made me stop and wonder
if JF Simon was a white man

his rolled Up sleeves with cigarettes tucked under,

or Polly Mop or Mine was Black:

she’s nearer to some other stones

like CHARLIE LARRAKIA standing silent

in a separate line.

And yet they’re linked —
I think back then

the kids were told it’s true

— he died for Polly —

and maybe even JF Simon tried believing too

in his untaught understanding

as he marched off scared but smiling with the band.
Complexions fading into land

whose surface has been lately labelled with secret signs

JF SIMONS

CHARLIE LARRAKIA

POLLY MOP OR MINE.
 

 

The cemetery fence
a crude inscription

reads

“Kill all MABO’s”.

The red paint bleeds on silent stone.
 

 
keeping records
On the surfaces

there’s a ranking by degrees

of anonymity

frorn least to better guessed:

xenophobe;

Polly Mop or Mine,

JF Simon; etcetera.

And yet, with a bit of effort,

I bet I could learn most about

the Corporal.

I reckon the Army

has a fading dossier

with further details:

blood group,

height, weight, parents (bereft) —

never mind that just like Polly’s runes

the writing’s all that’s left.
 

 
mind map
Like heated lead

these words burn into my head

almost under thinking,

ancl silent synapses

link tracer shells

across a darkened sky —

Charlie Larrakia

JF Simons,

Polly Mop or Mine,

the blood line defying all the silent stones

and what they stand for.