Echoes of Footsteps

Echoes of Footsteps

Pounding the pavement, they call it,
that heavy, resigned, no-end-in-sight walking.
Or pacing, when it’s done indoors.

I fancy I’d rather walk a bush track
with soft earth, leaves and grasses underfoot,
and birds nearby shifting and rustling,

their chatty little calls oblivious of me
and my concerns…. But I’m not,
I’m walking repetitively away from you

as I have done for years, when memory
returns you: walking that day and all days
away from me – stiffly, as if you didn’t want to.

And it was a pavement you trod. You didn’t
look back (I know because I did). In my mind
when this resurfaces, I’m always walking

away in the opposite direction. And lucky me,
it was toward sunlight and freedom, and loves
enough to dull the anguish, a life to go on to

eventually, after the walking and walking
I did in those later months of shock and grief,
talking to you in my head, uselessly.

Decades later I asked my most psychic friend
if you’re with the angels. (Someone else told me
long ago, it's not true suicides go to Hell.)

She didn’t see you with the angels. She thought
you were evil. ‘He didn’t love you!’ she said,
scornfully. It may be true. Trouble is, I loved you.

But – 'No,' she said, 'You loved the lie.'
I don't know any more ... remembering
(forever) your laugh, your soft eyes.


Linking to Weekly Scribblings #26: Pavement at Poets and Storytellers United

Hello Earth #28

Hello again, Earth!

Here we are, on the last day of June 2020, for the last of these daily letters to you. It’s been fun! But now it stops. It’s not you, it’s me. 

   Wisecracks aside, it’s been an amazing four weeks. Doing this daily has taken me to unexpected realisations. And it has been good to conjure you, Earth, as a present, listening companion.

Earth, you are so much bigger than that. I inhabit one small, relatively green and unpolluted part of you. I’m aware of the rest, have travelled some of it, lived in other places than here ... but I let this region stand for the all. Still, it’s you I speak to, that whole greater than the sum of the parts, which at the same time infuses every part — as an arm is to the body, or any one life form is to God.

Leaning in, I blow you a kiss, dear Earth. I’m not going to keep doing this daily, but l’m thinking of doing something similar from time to time. Maybe weekly? We’ll see. But I won’t leave it vague. This exercise has shown me the value of discipline. I’m a freedom-freak – but it’s like writing poetry: formal constraints can provide more depth, more focus, more intensity. Putting in place a structure paradoxically allows greater freedom to move, the expression supported by that structure. (I think.) Anyway, a regular commitment to communing with you, Earth, being mindfully in the present moment with you, would support me in receiving all that's valuable in this practice. So I’ll think about it, decide how often to talk to you in future, and make a schedule — not a chore; a treat to look forward to.

Listing gratitudes: I’m grateful to me for taking on these communications with you, Satya for offering the opportunity, and the readers who tell me they value these musings. (I was afraid they'd see them as boring or self-indulgent.) Above all I’m grateful to you, dear Earth, for the amazing fact of your existence in a form that not only supports life but nurtures it ... nurtures, enriches and blesses my life — and challenges me too. I’m grateful for being here now; for all the present moments I’ve enjoyed or endured. 

Offering grateful appreciation, I promise to love you every second of my life. An easy promise to make: I can’t not love you.  I’ll say cheerio for now, while knowing you are really still here with me every moment. Talk to you again soon!
   ... A nice breezy  finish. But then I rethink. I can’t not love you, I say, believing it to be true. But ‘actions speak louder than words’, in love as in everything else. How I express my love is crucial, now that my species is altering you so rapidly, in ever more harmful ways. How can I love you helpfully, protectively? Let that be the lasting exploration I take from this.

Hello Earth #27

Hello dear Earth, dear Earth hello —

Here it’s sunny today, and I feel glorious. The tiny few clouds in the sky are feathering the rim of the mountains over the way, leaving the vast expanse clear. My plants have been steadily rained on, and now are lifting their faces to drink the sun.

Earth, I marvel at your weathers which result in such real, visible effects. Nature is indeed a Goddess, all-knowing, all-wise, all-nurturing. (OK, for now we’ll conveniently ignore floods, hailstorms, cyclones ... no doubt they too have their uses.)

Leaning in, I reflect how this pandemic has had its uses, as we have been forced to confront different ways of living, and we have been shown the good effects of our reduced ‘footprints’ on the landscape. These lessons come at horrendous cost. Here in Australia, where the danger has been handled fairly well, it’s hard to imagine what it must be like In countries where thousands are dying daily. It must seem as if no object lessons could be worth it ... and yet, isn’t it the very conditions we’re being shown ways to correct which led to the pandemic in the first place? The overcrowding, notably. 

Listing gratitudes, I just know I am grateful for my life, and for spending it on this beautiful, amazing planet. I have always felt that, all my life — and even if my life had been cut short early, I would still have thought myself lucky to be here for any time vouchsafed. 

Offering you my gratitude and delight, dear Earth, I offer also everything I am, your humble servant.


Submitted (a couple of months later) to Poets and Storytellers United's Writers' Pantry #34: Writing Is Easy.

Hello Earth #26

Hello Earth, dear Earth —

Here I am once more, on a dingy wet morning outside, cosily en-caved in here. I'm still in pyjamas, late in the morning. I think I’ll make this steadily-drizzling Sunday a stay-in-jarmies day. I've been playing with lipstick, a new tube in my favourite colour (I ran out of the old one quick). Odd, to be in my jarmies (+ cardigan and ugg boot slippers) with no make-up and bed hair, sporting lippy. But no-one is likely to see. And if they do — well, the bed hair looks surprisingly good today, curly all over. I wanted to try what this paint-on lippy felt like without the accompanying gloss. It felt tacky, so the gloss is now on too. (Well, no sense wiping the lippy off instead; this one's hard to remove, designed to last all day.)

Earth, you can tell I’m feeling relaxed and silly, positively frivolous. All the serious stuff about life in general is still going on, out there beyond the cave walls, but for today it can stay there. Sometimes a woman needs to be a girl.

Leaning in, I contemplate what other pleasantly shallow things I might do today (having already spent much of the morning playing on Instagram). I might make fudge. (My online poet friend Bev sent me the very easy – even for me – recipe and I’ve now got the ingredients.) I’ll definitely read some more of a romantic comedy series I’m devouring. (Julia Kent, laugh-out-loud funny). I might find something pleasantly mindless on telly. (No, NOT reality TV! How anyone can watch that.... Much too mindless even for me, even in ‘day off’ mode.)

Listing gratitudes, I admit I am sometimes selfishly grateful for First World problems like what to watch on TV. I’m grateful today for the rain; and that it’s Sunday, when it’s legit to tell the world to go away if we feel like it ... those of us who have that luxury. And there! I’ve switched the mood. It’s not for long we can ignore the wider reality, or tell ourselves we’re unconnected to it.
   A car on the street sounds as if it’s right on my front veranda as someone unseen opens and shuts the door, starts up and drives away. Another reminder that we are all more closely connected than we think. I know by the sound which house it was parked outside, and so I have an idea what the driver might look like, and I know that driver is a guest, not family. (Family cars are parked in the garage, not on the street.) All this I know by hearing alone ... no, not alone, combined with memory.

Offering up these speculations, I choose to abandon them. Instead I think about making that fudge.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bev's fudge recipe

The fudge, which Bev and I have both written of a few times now, turned out excellent! Here, with her permission, is Bev's recipe:

"I use Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk, one 14 oz can.  You may not have that brand available in Oz.   I prefer milk chocolate chips, some people prefer semi-sweet.   I have tried one of each (12 oz package), and I have tried one of chocolate and one of peanut butter chips.  The recipe is very forgiving.  Usually I add some walnut pieces, but that's optional. It's such a quick and easy recipe.  I've used tons of it for Christmas gifts.

I put the milk in a microwavable bowl, stir in the morsels, and nuke it for 1-2 minutes (depends on microwave) until chips have melted, stir in 1 tsp of vanilla and pour in 8x8 dish.  Chill until set. (Some people also stir in 1/3 cup butter, but I feel it's rich enough without)."

[In Australia, I did have to use a different brand of condensed milk approximately the same size, and needed two choc chip packets as ours are smaller. Also, lacking an 8x8 dish, I used a rectangular pan of similar size.  First time around I didn't think to line it with baking paper so had to tip it upside down and run hot water over it to get the fudge out! I have now made this fudge with dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate. The white choc gives a softer texture. Although dark is my favourite in every other circumstance, not here: milk choc seems to taste more fudgy somehow. But they're all yummy. I agree with Bev about the butter: it's already rich enough!]

Sharing all this with Writers' Pantry #32 at Poets and Storytellers United.

Hello Earth #25

Hello Earth

Here, again, I greet you, after a day of all sorts of small tasks. Some were domestic and practical tasks, all the little things that add up to taking care of myself. Others were digital and communicative. A news report on telly tonight said people have been using the internet more during the pandemic, to stay connected. I was already using it that way, for years. It doesn’t feel abnormal.

Earth, I like you at night when everything goes quiet — on winter nights, that is. In summer the nights have all kinds of sounds, of people and other creatures. In winter I feel as if I am in a cave: a surrounding, protective cocoon, but with plenty of room to move within it.  

Leaning in, I savour the ownership of my space. Not that I do own it, I rent it. But it’s Government housing and I have tenure. Unlike private rentals, I can put pictures on the walls wherever I like; I can have pets if I want to; I don’t have to worry about huge hikes in the rent. It feels like mine; it feels like home. 

Listing gratitudes, I start with the quiet street with pleasant neighbours — whom in fact I seldom see, which suits little old hermit me. (When we do see each other, we smile and wave. If anyone needs help, the rest of us will give it.) Then there’s the view of the Border Ranges out my front door; the view of Mt Warning, I mean Wollumbin, as I drive in and out of my street. (I don’t see the mountain views from my windows, but I don’t feel deprived by that.) I’m thankful too for the frangipani tree across the front wall, which has doubled its height in the 10 years I’ve been here; and for the small back yard with neighbours’ trees along every fence, as if they were mine. I’ve enjoyed many times of sitting in my back yard, looking up through their leaves. They are mine!

Offering these thoughts, I bend my head to you, Earth, with my palms together making the ‘Namaste’. I bless you, Earth, for the many ways in which you have blessed me. 


369 words of prose for Poets and Storytellers United's Writers' Pantry #26: "You can make anything by writing".

Hello Earth #24

Hello Earth

Here I am, on a morning cold but sunny, about to have a late breakfast. First, of course, coffee. Well, first after looking out the door to see the mountains directly opposite, behind the houses across the street. Today the deep blue is slightly misted. No, I look again and realise it’s not that at all. It is that the clarity is so perfect today that inside that sharp royal blue I am seeing grey-green, individual rocks and trees. Amazing! What a place to live!

Earth, this area of you where I live is always pure joy to contemplate. It feeds my soul. I lived in the city of Melbourne longer than anywhere else (still, although my time here is fast catching up) and in those days it was pleasant living as cities go; the place had its own beauty. But it was still a city ... and now, decades later, is less beautiful and more of a screaming metropolis. (I know; I visit family there sometimes.) 

Leaning in, giving thanks for the unexpected circumstances which brought me to live here twenty-five-and-a-half years ago, I marvel at my good fortune. 

Listing gratitudes, they are: the parents and grandparents who taught me to value and reverence the natural world, it’s beauties and wonders; that natural world itself, and the sheer luck of beginning and ending my life in places rich with such beauty and wonder; trees, rivers, mountains, ocean, clean air, open skies, birds.... From far south, temperate Tasmania to sub-tropical Northern Rivers: rainforest places both, in their different and not-so-different ways. I am blessed and know myself blessed, beyond imagining.

Offering tears of thankfulness and delight, sitting here comfortable in my body, I pause our conversation, Earth, to be resumed next time, and go and get my coffee.

I'm sharing this, nearly two years later, with Poets and Storytellers United for Friday Writings #24: Your Landscape. 

The complete 'Hello Earth' series (unillustrated) is available free from Smashwords in epub format: here.

Hello Earth #23

Hello Earth

Here again I come to talk to you. Or do I talk to myself? Something answers. (Someone?) 

Earth, is it you who faces me with aspects of myself I've been avoiding? What matters, I suppose, is that they do arise so that I see and look at them. Is it any good, I wonder, when they are so full of contradictions? (See — contradiction right there, in those last two sentences.) 

Leaning in towards my own centre, I admit a truth: the bed is lonely. That’s why I take so many hours before getting into it each night. Yet I am not craving passionate encounters, and in fact I like my aloneness in many ways. Not being responsible for nor accountable to an other is a freedom, an enjoyment, a huge relief. I have become adapted, and would be reluctant to change that now. It is not the mind nor the heart that craves companionship; it’s the body. And no, not passion but simple touch. That human need. Some other body, human or animal, to cuddle up to on cold nights. Everyone urges me to get another pet. No, it’s not that straightforward; there are real, practical reasons why I couldn’t look after an animal properly any more. I’m too much of an animal lover to be selfish about it. I cuddle my soft toys instead — the teddy bears, the tiger, the baby leopard.

Listing gratitudes — self-awareness is a thing to be grateful for, and the way that evolves through putting words on paper (or, these days, on a screen). I’m grateful words are my ‘thing’: they serve me so well. What a blessing to have been born with! You can keep your maths and science, even your music. If I couldn’t have it all, still I’m beyond grateful to have this. And if words don’t keep me warm at night, they at least help me find what will. My soft toys. My happy memories. My extraordinary luck for circumstances that make me both privileged and blessed.

Offering my inner truth to you, Earth, I am able to offer it simultaneously to whoever will read this. Once I confront and acknowledge them, there is no more fear or embarrassment around these personal facts — they just are.

Shared with Poets and Storytellers United at Writers' Pantry #39

Hello Earth #22

Hello Earth

Here I am again. We’ve got to NOT stop meeting like this! I learn so much more about myself than I’d ever have known without these truthful, open-ended conversations. I never expected this simple practice would be so revelatory. (Yes, conversations, not monologues. You may not respond in words, dear Earth, but you are present, you listen, and you do return answers. You turn the conversation, more often than not, in directions I didn’t anticipate. And so I learn.)

Earth, the cold creeps in closer day by day. Yet it’s clothed in clear, bright sun. Both things take me by surprise each year, even though they should not be unexpected by now. It’s the same with my trumpet vines which bloom glorious orange each winter, a profusion indeed expected yet bursting into being sensationally new. Each year, in new delight, I take new photos. They look like the old, but never quite identical.

Leaning in, I savour being who I am where I am. How amazing to have reached this plateau where I have attained all I dreamed of for my life. Some of those dreams have run their course, but not before being fulfilled. It is what one hopes old age might look like: comfortable enough; rich in friends and family who care about me; free to  pursue activities I enjoy. And I find that contentment can become cloying! Eventually one needs the zing of the unexpected: the new, the challenging, having somewhere still to go, more room to grow. I consult the Tarot at Solstice for forward guidance. 'Change!' 'Transformation!' 'New beginnings!' I’m gobsmacked. I’m reluctant. Then I’m excited.

Listing gratitudes, I give thanks that the adventure of my life is not yet past. I contemplate the possibility of not ending my days having arrived at some perfect completion, but in the middle of still chaotically travelling through the unexpected, still looking ahead … the possibility that it is indeed better to travel than to arrive. (Hastily I reassure my child-self – who has never left me – that there can be small, temporary arrivals along the way, places to sit awhile and enjoy.)

Offering myself and you all this, dear Earth, I name it Possibility.

Another 369-worder, for sharing at Poets and Storytellers United's Weekly Scribblings #25: Well, That Was Unexpected.

Hello Earth #21

Hello Earth

Here I am, sitting in the mid-afternoon sun on my tiny front landing. (I went back in the house for a minute to get the insect repellent to discourage one of those sticky little flies that come around this time of year. But it still likes investigating the edge of my iPad.) 

 Earth, I’m rugged up, and it’s not too cold out here at present. A bird of some kind rustles in the tree nearby, out of view. My wind chimes sound faintly, the breeze making the wooden ringer tap lightly on the metal tubes. It’s a mellow note. I’ve had this set of chimes for about 25 years. I remember exactly which student gave them to me in return for teaching her Reiki. Her husband made them. They’ve been blown down twice over the years, in high winds, but only the strings were broken. 

Leaning in, I think about all the remembering I’m doing of late. Is this an effect of isolation or of old age? I don’t mind it anyway, as the memories are dear. There are things it’s pleasant to relive — and if sometimes tears are involved, they are few and gentle, and only because of the sweetness of what I remember. 

Listing gratitudes, I think my whole life is cause for gratitude — or at any rate, that I got the major traumas over early. I have had more and more cause to be grateful as life has gone on. It’s taken me a long time to grow into myself; perhaps that’s the explanation ... and I doubt if I’ve finished yet. 

Offering my love to you, Earth, I also send love to Life for being so kind to me.

Hello Earth #20

Hello, dear Earth

Here I am, sipping black coffee and nibbling an Anzac biscuit. My second coffee for the day; unusual to be having another so early (late morning) except when I go out for cuppa and cake with one of my friends – which of course hasn’t been happening lately, while we’ve all isolated. But I'm celebratory. The sun is shining, I just restrained myself from making a silly online purchase, and today I get to read some more of a friend’s poetry ms that she asked for an opinion on. (Making time between other occupations has been tricky, but that’s not the fault of the poems.)

Earth, you deserve poems, and music, and all the visual arts — so wondrous you are, so astounding, so huge and rich and generous. I could assert that you’re not so kind when it comes to firestorms, cyclones, floods ... but in fact, in recent decades, that might have been our doing, the human race, and you simply reacting, inevitable cause-and-effect.

Leaning in, I think I hear you whisper that you have laws, the Laws of Nature; and they’re not so hard to figure out by observation, by paying attention, by learning from our mistakes. I think it astonishes you that we cling to our mistakes because of motivations like greed and power. You gave us all we could need: what reason for greed? You put us in position as part of a functional ecosystem: what need of power? Why was it so hard for us to rejoice and accept? 

Offering gratitudes, those many of us who do, are we enough? Haven’t we all been corrupted, even though some only a little, by short-term comfort and the entertainments that dull the mind? Are we a hive organism, and if so what is the overall impetus of the hive? Where are we heading? ... Nevertheless, I have been here; I do offer gratitude.

Hello Earth #19

Hello Earth

Here I am, dear Earth, fresh home from the Winter Solstice gathering of the Goddesses of Shining Light. As around the circle we spoke our names, each added the statement, ‘I am here’. Some said, ‘I am glad to be here.’ One simply said, ‘I am’.
   Men may attend our Solstice and Equinox events, by invitation. The only man this morning, a first-time guest, said, ‘I am honoured to be here’. One of the women, who works with family violence victims, acknowledged him later: ‘How often do we hear a man say that? “Be the change that you want to see” – you are the change. Thank you.’

Earth, we saw a photo of you today, which one of us had on her phone. Taken from Voyager 2, near Saturn, it is famous as ‘the small blue dot’. What excited us was the huge ray of sunlight in which that dot floated. We as a group constantly use our collective energy to bathe the earth in light.

Leaning in, stretching up, bowing down, skipping in a circle, twirling on the spot, we danced for peace, for love, for joy … for you, dear Earth our Mother.

Listing gratitudes, we admitted we are blessed to live here, not in a teeming city but a place where every day we can open our doors to your beauty and sigh with delight. We gave thanks for being able to draw in so much light from our surroundings and send it out again as healing whilst affirming our vision of a new world. We gave thanks for what the Virus has shown us: that we can live differently, and how fast the environment can recover from our depredations; grateful for this pause to our old ways.

Offering our light, our vision, our gratitude – we sang, we reflected, we meditated. ‘We are seeing the start of something,’ said the one we call our Grandmother Goddess (not the only grandmother among us, but having that role towards the group). ‘I’m glad I’ve lived long enough,’ she said, ‘to know how things happen step by step, even if it doesn’t always seem so. I won’t be here at the end, but I’m glad to witness this beginning.’


Notes: 

We were conscious of observing the rules for those gatherings which are now allowed – which led to some fun alternatives to actual hugging, such as mimed kisses or holding up our hands and focusing energy through our palms to each other, saying, 'Bzzzz!'.

I posted this on Instagram immediately after I wrote it. Since then I've pared it down to the 369 words necessary for sharing a prose piece at Poets and Storytellers United's Writers' Pantry #25.

Photo: Public Domain. The image was processed by JPL engineer and image processing enthusiast Kevin M. Gill with input from two of the image's original planners, Candy Hansen and William Kosmann.

Hello Earth #18

Hello Earth

Here I am again, checking in with you, as the night gets more and more hushed.

Earth, I am liking these wintry days and nights so far. But I know they will get much colder before we’re done. It seems strange to me that this weekend is Solstice, officially mid-winter, as proven by the shortest day — yet we have two more months of winter to go, and the weather will get a deal more wintry than it is now. 

Leaning in, I savour the pleasure of having driven to the coast today to see my chiropractor, despite an off-putting burst of rain as I set out. My first visit since lockdown. I haven’t had pain, but was beginning to get a hunch back and a little-old-lady shuffle. I came out straight and sure-footed again. Just as well! Tomorrow the Goddess circle resumes meeting. We’ll be dancing the Solstice in — keeping the circle more widely spaced than we used to, with dances that don’t require holding hands. 

Listing gratitudes: that I can get adjustments from a good chiropractor; that I have already responded so well to her treatments that in this time without them I didn’t go back into pain; that I’ll see some beloved women tomorrow; that I can still joyfully dance.

Offering to you my gratitude and joy, Earth, I look forward to dancing on, with and for you tomorrow.

Written 6 months ago. Sharing now, in December 2020, with Poets and Storytellers United at Writers' Pantry #50. At this present time we approach Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, but are in the middle of a sudden cold, rainy spell quite suited to this post.

Despite the cheery words I wrote that day, most of us went back into isolation after all, for the second wave of the Coronavirus, and are only just starting to venture out more often again, in time for Christmas.

Hello Earth #17

Hello, dear Earth

Here I am, a mere speck on your surface, addressing you as if I think you would notice me.

Earth, we sometimes believe you do notice every tiny living being inhabiting you, but we are so many, and we live and die and are replaced so frequently over all the millennia – how could it be?

Leaning in, I listen and know that every living being is capable of communicating with every other, whether by sounds, images, feelings or verbal language. And yes, it is my experience that you too have that awareness, both infinitely all-encompassing and minutely specific. 

Listing gratitude, I’d have to list your whole self plus every earthly living thing. I am indeed grateful for you, for them/us, and for the experience of that awareness, even if it’s delusionary … for the ridiculous conviction that it isn’t delusionary. To live on this planet – to be here as part of your living Nature, Earth – what an incredible blessing!

Offering you today, my joy, my gratitude … as my unique self and as a mere speck among countless others.

Sharing, months later, with Writers Pantry #51 at Poets and Storytellers United.

Hello Earth #16

Hello Earth

Here I am, watching dusk descend. My friend has driven away on the winding road to Tunstable Falls. It’s well dark now by 5pm, so he didn’t linger, even though we live in different States and haven’t seen each other for months. Now, with lockdown slightly lifted, he could travel here (by car); we can meet. Tea and cake on opposite sides of the table. No hugs. (Any other time, I’d have said, ‘Come stay with me!')

Earth, he tells me he enjoys where he's staying, close to you, listening to the same birds he remembers from forty-odd years ago, their unique calls still filling the rainforest. Now he’s a much-travelled city-dweller, but being back with these trees and birds feels like home. (So I’m OK with not saying, ‘Come stay with me!’) 

Leaning in, I listen to tales of other countries. I show him my journeyings in cyberspace. This year he cannot go to Europe or Africa or the Middle East. But he’s glad he got home in time after the last journey, before lockdown. This year I live more than ever online, all the poetry events now happening there.  (And this year I don’t tell my friend, ‘Come stay with me!’)

Listing gratitudes: When all else fails, there’s poetry. My friend is a poet. He's a little sad; he wants to visit another poet friend in Queensland. That man is 86 and sounding frail. The border into Queensland is still closed. It probably won’t be open before he heads home. I’m grateful he got to spend an afternoon with me. I’m grateful I’m this side of the border. I’m grateful he came to visit and, for a few hours, could stay with me.

Offering these reflections, I feel they're little enough. But humans have a need, it seems, for personal interactions with each other. When all else fails, we’ll go through a screen. But it’s preferable to breathe the same air (no matter if dangerous) or smile across a room instead of across the miles. I step outside, listen to the birds, inhale the scent of the trees. Dear Earth, when all else fails, I stay with you. Please stay with me!


A 369-word 'slice of life' for  Weekly Scribblings #24: When All Else Fails… at Poets and Storytellers United.

Hello Earth #15

Hello Earth

Here I am, watching a documentary about the water world on the east coast of Australia. I am looking at fish, I am hearing a man talk about his lifelong infatuation with the ocean, and I am travelling back in my mind to my Tasmanian childhood, some of it spent on boats — small boats, close to the water. I am remembering my stepfather and my little brother, and Mum under a big, floppy sun hat.

Earth, the narrator of the program is making a point about how, if we care about our marine life, we need to stop using fossil fuels and change to renewables. Now I am watching a turtle. Before that, whales. Now sea birds dance on Lord Howe Island. Now a wave soars in a rush of fine white spray.

Leaning in, I share a sunrise with the photographer. But then the beauty is replaced by sad evidence of how we are killing the wild things — pieces of plastic in dead birds’ stomachs, filling the baby birds’ bellies so full that they are malnourished. An aerial view shows huge garbage conglomerations in every ocean — so we know the plastic is also affecting the whales, the turtles, the fish.

Listing gratitudes, I give first place to the work being done to restore Lord Howe to its environmental purity — one place on earth that is actually improving; the only one.

Offering my gratitude, I think I should also be offering prayers.

Sharing (8 Nov 2020) with Writers' Pantry #45 at Poets and Storytellers United

Hello Earth #14

Hello Earth

Here I am, coughing with chronic sinusitis, and because the mould in my house is bad again. I’m grateful it’s not a COVID-19 cough and hope no-one will think it is. (Not that I am going out just yet – but will need to tomorrow, briefly.)

Earth, I miss the going out into the beauty of this area I live in ... and I’m grateful anyway to have lived most of my life surrounded by trees, mountains and water. I remember some fool years ago, who thought she knew me, saying confidently, ‘You’re a city girl’ (perhaps because I was living in Melbourne at the time). No I’m not!

Leaning into that old memory, I acknowledge I did enjoy Melbourne for a long time, and I’m grateful for all it gave me. And I lived all over it at different times. But mostly I lived near trees and the ocean, even there. I’m grateful that I was able to.

Listing gratitudes, my lasting ones are to do with being a child of nature. I remember long walks in the bush when I lived in Launceston, when the house I grew up in and the one we moved to later were both close to areas of bush land. I’m grateful for an era and locality where I could do that alone as a youngster, and then as a teenage girl, safely. I’m grateful it was a safety we could take for granted back then.

Offering you, Earth, my gratitude for all your nurturing beauty, I look back and see that I grew up with, in some ways, precious freedom. I give heartfelt thanks for that, too.

Tasmanian bushwalk. Image available under Creative Commons attribution 3.0 from this site.

Hello Earth #13

Hello again, Earth.

Here I am, in the late afternoon, the sky already dark at 5pm. My home feels like a cave.

Earth, this winter evening you've created encloses and enfolds me, bleak and cosy at once, after the day of rain. Yesterday was different, one serendipitously fine day amongst rainy ones. I went out for lunch on my friends’ patio. There were five of us, a couple visiting as well as me. We’ve known each other since 1999, when we were all neighbours (and my Andrew was still very much alive). 

Leaning in, we feasted, drank good rosé, and reminisced. There were vegetable and fish curries — none quite hot enough for me, whose Mum grew up in India (despite the cook describing one as ‘poisonously hot’) but not so mild as to be tasteless either. There was the most delectable tart-sweet mango sorbet. Later we strolled around our hosts’ garden; I photographed roses, camellias and begonias, and a tiny turtle figurine in a huge dish. On the way home I stopped to snap the cloudy late sky just before sundown. But now I am back in my cave. I think I have been managing isolation well — and I have, compared with many — but, even eschewing hugs and refraining from getting too close, it was surprisingly good to dress up, go out and have real live conversations with real live people (not through a screen). 

Listing gratitudes: my years in this Caldera, the people I’ve met here, the times we’ve had, how so many of us were led here, called here ... for the blessing of this magical land, this ancient earth, this cradle of life forms including human, this realm of living Spirit.

Offering you, Earth, my thanks for this wondrous life I’ve been blessed with. It was good to get the miseries over early in my life, to travel more and more towards fulfilment. I like where I am. 

Sharing (a couple of months later) with Poets and Storytellers United, at Writers' Pantry #31.

Hello Earth #12

Hello Earth #12

Hello dear Earth

Here I am, giving myself permission to break rules if I need to. (Today we are encouraged to do so in our earthellos if we need to.)

Earth, many people have been breaking rules about social distance to protest that Black Lives Matter. I didn’t, because of specific health conditions. I don’t take part in any protests in that way any more – my marching days are past. In the past, I did my share, and would again, if…. Not much of a rule-breaker, I break them when it’s important. 

Leaning in, let me tell you that breaking the rules for writing an earthello is not important to me. I like the form as it is; it allows me room to say what I need within the (few) constraints. As there are many ways for me to affirm that Black Lives Matter. Really it is necessary to take every opportunity. My friend Jennie couldn’t go either, in her town, so she painted the slogan in big black letters on her wire-mesh fence. I don’t have a front fence, and I live in a quiet cul-de-sac devoid of passers-by. So I shall hold it like a question I live inside: How can I live and be in such a way as to stand for the fact that black lives matter? What can I do to further the action so all our behaviours come to reflect that truth? (OK, two questions.)

Listing gratitudes: I am grateful for the strong and beautiful indigenous people I’m blessed to call friends: 13-year-old performance poet Jasmine; activist, poet, matriarch, and grand-daughter of another activist poet, Kaiyu; local elder Deirdre. I’m grateful for powerful indigenous writers: Bruce Pascoe, Jack Davis, Maureen Watson, Oodgeroo Noonuccal; Anita Heiss; Kevin Gilbert; Kerri Shying; Lionel Fogarty; Ruby Langford Ginibi; Sally Morgan and many others (naming the ones I’ve read). I'm grateful that nowadays many white Australians, too, are outraged at the desecration of sacred sites. We have far to go, but we have come a little way.

Offering my commitment to continue living in those questions; to breaking those rules that need to be broken; to giving my words even to uncomfortable truths.


Sharing this at Poets and Storytellers United's Writers' Pantry #24, as a 369-word piece of prose.

Hello Earth #11

Hello Earth

Here I am after a quiet, wet day of doing quiet things.

Earth, as the rainy sky made the horizon shrink in close, I felt wrapped up and protected, mentally snuggling into my home.

Leaning in, feeling looked after, I only went out once, to put the bins on the street for tomorrow’s collection. My shoes brought long brown leaves back into the house.

Listing gratitudes, I’m warmed by the pleasure of having my lawn mowed today. I’m always glad to see Phil’s cheerful face, and I’m grateful that he cuts the lawn perfectly, not too short and not too long, and for how good it looks afterwards.

Offering these simple, everyday pleasures into the truth of my life, I cherish my life.

Written in (the Australian) Winter, but sharing in late Spring with Poets and Storytellers United via Writers' Pantry #47.