Daniel Schaumann

In June 2008 I packed my bags and moved from Brisbane to the UK to follow my heart and be with a girl I’d fallen desperately in love with. As amazing as the experience was, unfortunately it didn’t work out, and we inevitably went our separate ways. This is a poem I wrote that expresses what we would have done, if I’d had the opportunity to take her back to my home country and show her some of the breathtaking sights that Australia has to offer:

If romance beckoned, like we sensed with our predestination
If real life offered passion, bliss and fun
If love we’d birthed, across the Earth I’d take you on vacation
If only… this is what we would have done:

We’d spend the day at Byron Bay, the soaring house aglow
We’d walk for miles in the springtime sun
Astoundingly across the sea, the dolphins stage a show
If only… this is what we would have done

The paradisal stretch upon where surfers bear their joy
Percussive skins with bells like beating drums
Synchronic and eurhythmic like a golden girl to boy
If only… this is what we would have done

Stranded on a summer night, the bay of roses bound
The rock is cold, the sweetness pads our tongues
Traverse a thrill atop the hill, above precinctual sounds
If only… this is what we would have done

Amidst the virgin bush we trek, we grace the stream alone
The tree above proclaiming us as one
The water blue, just me and you, a place to call our home
If only… this is what we would have done

Further north we venture now, the tropic impulse starts
Inspires humid zeal within our lungs
The forest green, the beach pristine, adjoining like our hearts
If only… this is what we would have done

The culmination of our time spent in this sacred land
Encompasses a safe, yet stirring plunge
We reach beneath the coral reef, elation, hand in hand
If only… this is what we would have done

So we’d leave behind the frosty vales, the frigid, foggy nights
A source of temperate union we’d become
Living, loving, in Australia, IF I WEREN’T SUCH A FUCKING FAILURE
If only… that was not what I’d become

If only… this is what we would have done.

© 2008 Daniel Schaumann