The legendary Mr Pearson

By Adam Gibson ©

the absolute sausage sizzle expert,
Mr Pearson's toes enthralled a generation
of kids by the sandside suburbs
who watched their curled and scurried form
scratching from salt water
to cold sand
to concrete
and back again

Mr Pearson,
always in t-shirt,
always in shorts,
frying the onions in the
North Bondi Surf Club garage,
beneath the old squash court,
the sausages sizzling,
someone's mum manning
the tomato sauce distribution

Mr Pearson is
carrying some old surfboards somewhere,
he is mending something,
he is roping off an area on the sand
for the Nippers to gather:
anything suggesting inactivity, well,
he wouldn't hear of it

Mr Pearson,
an old Australian person who
will never return:
non-ironic
non-knowing,
everything faded through use
not fashion,
nothing contrived,
salt mornings when no-one else
could be bothered,
not there to be seen or not seen,
just there

toes cragged and ragged,
a walk which suggested a limp but
no limp to actually pinpoint,
on the beach promenade and
down to the sand

no children,
no wife ever spotted.
the type of childless man who
could be,
and often is,
forgotten,
passed over in the annals:

but no ...
the absolute sausage sizzle expert,
Mr Pearson's toes enthralled a generation
of kids by the sandside suburbs
and he remains

remembered.