Woven Retreat
For Jo, Bron, and family. For the beautiful humans of Woven. For Awabakal and Worimi land and its custodians, past, present and future. May we never stop nurturing, protecting, and loving.
Stone beneath sand,
Tree holding skin and flesh,
Strength and softness.
The morning announced by radiant sun and the butcherbird's warbling melody
Kookaburra orchestra and spring splendour.
And the delicate brushstrokes that make their way across this canvas—
The stirring of soft feathers.
Little brown antennae, poised and trembling.
Baby's cry.
In stillness we find the perpetual motion of being alive,
the small dance between our feet and the floor
the quiver of dewy webs
sand crystals cascading in the periphery
stars journeying across the sky, as slow and imperceptible as time itself.
You have cracked me open.
The calcified work-worn world-weary husk
peels and crumbles away
No more fearful clenching protection for the grief within.
You have cracked me open and poured me out
Invisible golden tears flow from my seams
and return to an ocean layered with pebbles and pink hues.
I cannot hide from your touch,
from the story of your body as it pours weight into my bones
and opens up my old wounds.
"It is easy to trust a tree, and hard to trust a human."
Yet, do we not all deserve love? And kindness? And reciprocity?
Perhaps
I don't have to get along with you
to love you.
The last of my grief trickles out,
oozing amber sap
leaving behind a constellation of stars.
Between tobacco and grass-tree stalk
an ember is born
fed by ash and bulrush and living breath.
The bouquet of bush-fluff, bundled in soft paperbark, alights into existence.
Fire-baby crackles with delightful flames
which dance and laugh and play with shadow
as though only returning
as though it has done this before
and will do forevermore.