James Collis

I am not a poet and have never been published, but would like to share these words relating to the passing of my father a few years ago from an aggressive cancer. He was the owner/operator of a small trucking firm within the livestock industry in Wagga for many years; as a young man I worked with him as his offsider, driver and mechanic. He was well known as a reputable carrier and less for the hundreds of paintings he produced of the country he travelled and loved. He and his paintings appeared in a feature article for the publication Trucking Life not long before he died; last year we held a retrospective of his work at the regional gallery.
 
I don't presume this to be a poem but more an attempt to put to words loss, resilience and resignation. I imagined his body as the vehicle and the load as the illness.