We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

27.6.20

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.


27 comments:

  1. Oh wonderful and how nice to be able to see the mountains That's what I love about Christchurch as well. I heard our cities are a similar although Melbourne is vastly bigger. I hope to visit Australia in the future as I haven't been there yet I have a friend in Sydney so I would go there first

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    1. I would have loved to visit NZ too, but it seems unlikely now. I enjoy getting a glimpse through your writings and photos.

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  2. Remember this from the collection. Love how natural it seems and how inevitably this conversation will continue over coffee, someday.

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    1. I'm glad you still enjoyed it second time around!

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  3. What a nice way to greet the day and honor the earth.

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  4. You do indeed live in a beautiful part of the world

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  5. That is one gorgeously crisp blue sky. And those mountains...just lovely. I can see why you love living there.

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    1. There are many days when I say to myself, 'Why would anyone ever want to live anywhere else?' And then there are those other days, of bushfire or flood. Yet I still want to be here.

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  6. Oh, i have not read one of your hello earth acroustics in a long while. Glad it is back.
    Have a nice weekend.

    much💛love

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    1. Not so much 'back' as resurrecting one of the original series which few people had seen. Glad you enjoiyed.

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  7. Hello Rosemary, I love the picture you put up. What a view!

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    1. Yes, it's wonderful – and ever changing with the weather.

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  8. Coffee...I dig the ending. What an excellent view.

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    1. Everything is always (even) better with coffee! Yes, I am very blessed by my view, in fact all the views around here.

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  9. Mountains do feed the soul - as does a long expanse of water... Combined they are amazing.

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  10. Testing - did you get my previous comment?

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    1. Oh Margaret, I did. But you've been away from P&SU for a while; you may have forgotten that some of us moderate our comments. Then you have to remember the time difference: when you're reading and commenting I'm likely to be asleep – so there can be quite a gap between when you make a comment and when it appears here.

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  11. Reading your words this morning...coffee in hand, I am struck by their sheer beauty, the thankfulness you describe ... I too, have tears in my eyes. Thankful for life, loved ones, friends, my smallish city.

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    1. Glad to have re-awakened your fellow-feelings.

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  12. I always like to read your "Hello Earth" writings. There is a gentle tone and a dose of optimism in the words. There are no mountains where I lived, maybe man-made canyons. And the few mountains I have been to (excluding Mt. Fuji) are best forgotten. :)

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    1. I prefer to gaze upon mountains rather than climb them! I grew up surrounded by them in Tasmania, as I've indicated above, so am never quite comfortable unless there are some on the horizon. (A dear friend grew up on the plains and loved that vast expanse of sky, but I would feel flattened and squashed by it.) It's wonderful to have arrived in this landscape so reminiscent of my childhood home – except with warmer weather! (even better) – at this end of my life.

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  13. Rosemary, hello! I love your words of wonder about Earth. You could be looking out my bedroom window here in California. Overlooking rooftops and trees (not as thick since people here fear the mess of trees) is a mountain ridge that until I moved back I thought were hills. :-)

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    1. Oh, I'm glad you have such a lovely view from your bedroom window!

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  14. It's beautiful and calming to read this "Hello Earth" post. <3

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