I have been away for a week
and come back to find
Galbamaanup Lake Claremont
below a metre
on the gauge.

The water is a muddy
colour
and the scent is 
of rich and watery worlds
drying slowly out.

There are the teals and black ducks still,
black winged stilts,
a white-faced heron;
the swamphens won’t go far;
a couple of swans with later-season young 
still not fully coloured—
I wonder if there will be enough water
for them to take off 
when their wings are strong enough.

I hear the sound of the pied 
butcherbird. 
Manatj is there in a flock
in the figs;
and they’re all taking off 
as a raptor—
probably kestrel—
flies by overhead,
many of the other birds moving in 
one contraction
towards the lake’s centre.

How alive this place is,
even as it nears (watery) death;
the bird life is just 
one expression of this.

It reaches out to me,
and I welcome and observe it,
holding it 
within the whole.

It is a great teacher,
this place—
a place of knowledge.

I try to give back as 
much as I can,
by listening,
by holding it
with the 
whole of the Earth,
the whole of the
human being.