My eighth November verse this year is a response to the Auburn Poets Challenge #35, which invites all comers to submit a poem using five prescribed words – wing, copper, acorn, string, infinite.
November verse 8: Primary school, North Queensland, 1950s 'The tallest oak was once an acorn.' 'What's an acorn? What's an oak?' Outside the class, rainforest staghorns, frangipani, figs that choke their weaker neighbours, mangrove breathers went unnoticed by our teachers. All things European stood for all things real, and all things good. Like coppers' verbals, MPs' lying, what religions give to youth as infinite eternal truth, these lessons sent the real world flying kite-like, on such distant wings that we could barely hold its string.
Me fail? I fly! 
This was why Rex Ingamells and the Jindyworobaks! It features in an early part of Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus – this total disconnect with looking at the world in Australia as if situated 20,000km away and in the northern hemisphere – it’s why the movement to ditch colonial and derivative names of places, features – in favour of the Indigenous and proper – is gaining such traction.
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And when it was not Europe, it was Sydney. Really liked this one.
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So true! That was exactly the thought I couldn’t squeeze in
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Really love this one xxx
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Thanks, Ween
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