The Clearing Sale - Slim Dusty

Have you ever stopped to linger when a clearing sale is done?

And the warmth of that old homestead seems to vanish with the sun

All the bidders have their bargains and the auctioneer is paid

And the twilight wraps the old home in its dreams of yesterday

The gate is swinging open as I take the lonely path

No welcome lights the window, no cheery blaze to warm the hearth

And I feel like an intruder as though I walk on sacred ground

Only silence comes to greet me for the shadows make no sound

There’s a rocker in a corner but it won’t rock no more

There’s a lucky horseshoe hanging still on a nail above the door

I step upon a child’s toy, hell, a broken tip truck red and blue

Oh I seem to hear a child laugh maybe you can hear it too?

I see my own reflection in a mirror on the wall

And a picture of a horse team lies forgotten in the hall

Just a few things no one bid for and now they’re set aside at last

Like the memories of the homestead now they’ll slip into the past

I wonder how the old man felt to see his tractor go?

And it must have hurt the old wife, though she’d never let it show

To see the things she had a lifetime now pass into other hands

No a clearing sale’s not easy friends when it’s time to leave the land

Just a few discarded relics of the days that used to be

And I leave them as I found them for what could they mean to me

Now the night is on the old house and the starlight softly gleams

As I close the gate behind me and leave the homestead with its dreams