Wildflowers

Words & Music: Pat Drummond.
For Trevor Jenkins
Dateline: 26/05/2006 Leadville, NSW

Half the art of travelling is knowing when to stop. My chance meeting with Trevor Jenkins near Leadville, NSW followed a stop I made to investigate a 20 km line of mysterious 'junkpiles' alonga stock route south of Coolah. It led to a startling conversation which challenged me to rethink my definitions of both Art and Work; and their purpose they bring to our lives.

WildflowersPatD.mp3

He left the university

when they finally threw him out

His major work was a metal lid

from a garbage can he'd found

They did not understand it

No words could quite explain

The way the light bounced on the metal

and danced around his brain


Angst and depression followed him

Till he finally 'found the Lord'

He walked from Scone to Gunnedah

Preaching the Gospel word

They picked him up for trespass

They said he wasn't well

as the light danced on the needle

that they brought to his prison cell




Chorus: And the wildflowers grow by the side of the road

Neon blossoms of silver and gold

And they only last one day

till the junkman comes to sweep them away

and they bloom beneath the moon and stars

And nobody sees how beautiful they are

 

They set him free in Gunnedah

with his meagre prison pay

Put it down on the ground in front of them

Then turned and walked away

He slept beneath a road bridge

In the middle of the night

The bottles rained from the passing cars and

That was when he saw the light


In the next few months of travelling

all along the endless miles

junkpiles by the roadside grew

ten feet apart and a metre high

Like a strident accusation

Like the sum of all our fears

They grew from things we threw

into the Bush for a hundred years



Chorus: Chorus: And the wildflowers grow by the side of the road

Neon blossoms of silver and gold

And they only last one day

till the junkman comes to sweep them away

and they bloom beneath the moon and stars

And nobody sees how beautiful they are



The children started noticing

Somehow they understood

The grown ups started worrying

But they began to bring him food

the media discovered him

The man on the ABC

said he was cleaning up Australia

and Still we had no eyes to see.

For like The teachers at his Art school

The men who worked the land

Looked upon those anguished shapes

and still they do not understand

I don't know how I recognised

those twisted shapes of mud and wood

but looking down that line of Junkpiles

Suddenly I understood

And I said "Trevor Why do you think they're feeding you?

And He said "cause I'm cleaning up I guess..."

And I said " but you're not are you?

I mean you are but ... I've been looking at those piles... and
that's not what this is ...is it?

 

His pale grey eyes filled up with tears

as we sat on the verge.

When he saw someone had understood

and knew exactly what they were.


His sculptures speak of the possibility

of a life without constraint

Work done of our own volition

and the pictures that they paint

Ask us why we waste our lives

We so blest and set apart

That we should cast away our days like so much junk

When they were destined to be art


Chorus: Like wildflowers we grow by the side of the road

Neon rainbows of silver and gold

And we only last a day

till The Reaper comes to sweep us away

As we bloom beneath the moon and stars

Waiting for someone to notice how beautiful we are

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