Wild flowers barely contained in shifting sand, guarded by barbed sentries: the Tiger Pear, the Barbary Fig. Thorns against hardwood. No country for sword-rescuing princes trained to breach frail branches in pretty French woodlands.
Here, the land is stolen.
Here, tormented painters anoint sun-struck rock: turquoise and purple, scarlet and silver, colours worn on the garments of high priests in a different desert, millennia distant, accepting commandments etched on other rocks they say were made of sapphire.
Here,the land protests her heavy tread: where is the light brown step of long ago, the nimble footfall that left no mark?
All she has are these booted feet, this endless apology.
Yet sometimes she wants to say, I belong here too. My parents came by boat, the lives of their families forfeit. Can’t we share? There’s so much…
How is it possible to breathe in the leaves, the earth, the air and say they smell of this or that?
What does eternity smell like?
Or absence?
A heron gliding
A dingo howling?
Yhi, Sun Goddess, created Man after all else was brought into the world. And after all else was brought into the world, Yahweh said, Let us make Man.
Stories written long ago to be told forever.
Everyone has their dreaming.