When The Winds Change

A poem based on an excercise that one of the members of my group set. She brought in a photocopied sheet from a book about the convicts who came to Dover and Southport. The sheet listed all the convicts who came, their ages, crimes and marital status. We were instructed to choose one of these convicts, and write their story.

The subject of my story, a seventeen year old boy whose crime was stealing money for clothes, dwelled in my mind  for some time afterwards. And so I wrote this.

Seven years are my sentence
But my lifetime I shall serve
For though the jury may say otherwise
'Tis a death sentence I have earned.

And when the winds change
When they whisper of home
I think only of you
My sister.

My mother, she is dead,
My father disappeared,
It was only you and I, my sister
And now, for you I fear.

And when the winds change
When they whisper of home
I think only of you
My sister.

Two men and a child have died,
The others have taken their clothes
Their deaths are kept quiet, the bodies unmoved,
So their food ration keeps coming round.

And when the winds change
When they whisper of home
I think only of you
My sister.

I'm bound for a new world,
The Southern Land, Australia,
So far from our life, together
And yet so near to our deaths, apart.

And when the winds change
When they whisper of home
I think only of you
My sister.


When the winds change,
I can hear your sweet voice,
uplifted in song
Despite all misery.

When the winds change,
I think only of you,
When the winds change,
my sister.