A rainy cool day. Phone calls with Arkue and then a surprise visit from the Girls and their aunt and cousin. Just lovely. Got some food into me.Little bit. Little bit. Facetimed with Eden and now bed with the rain still falling.
I drive out to Amoonguna to tell family he is right I sit down with his Aunty, round the campfire, in the night I ask her to explain the pelicans and the meaning of the sign She laughs and whispers,
‘Arrangkwe just 2 pelicans in the sky!’
ALI COBBY ECKERMANN
Poet’s Note: arrangkwe – (arrente word) means no, nothing, no-one
I live this strange small life of being almost entirely at home alone. Of eating almost no food at all. Of sleeping almost all of everyday. I am no longer at ease amongst other people – but I am deeply at ease within myself – most of the time. Of very little shopping or eating out. I graze from the vegies in the garden.
Perhaps I am mixing a little piece of Nana in the Girls. One that they can each carry for the rest of their lives. Pieces of me passing into my Girl and my Boy. Perhaps I am dissolving. Shimmering as JB called it. And leaving them just some of the best of me. Perhaps one day they will use it.
When I looked at Izzy lying in the dirt of the road, it seemed to me that his goodness and desire to be of good was simply more than his body could hold and it seemed to me that he had splintered into millions of shards of light and gone dancing off to all the people places and things that needed him.
As for me I do the opposite. I gradually fade away. Gradually shimmer to there is little left of Lynne in the world. I am now as fragile as the white hibiscus I loved at the Beachshack. Translucent.
FROM MY FRIEND KATHY EARSMAN. SYLVAN SPRITES.
Seeing Things
At dawn, when sunshine spills across the grass,
my eye is drawn to fuzzy globes of light
that float and flit on gauzy wings. They pass
down low to skim the dandelions, their flight
controlled, describing angles as they go
criss-crossing rapidly without a pause
which makes it hard to see them clearly, though
here’s one that hovers near, defying laws
of physics… Oh. It’s just a dragonfly.
A pity, for I thought I’d seen the dance
of sylvan sprites. Ah, Mother Nature’s sly:
for where there’s prey there’ll always be a chance,
and here’s a tic-tac-toe of silver webs
to catch the morning fairies by the legs.
© Copyright 2002 Kathy Earsman
the SILVERBIRD 12 