We paddle up the Marlbeelup Chapman Brook
and out into the Djujulyup Blackwood and
head upriver. It is calm and cloudy
and humid-hot and quiet.

Peppermints hang out
over the water, light green
against the rest of the forest
all darker green marri and jarrah and karri
and I assume blackbutt,
maybe other eucalypts.
There are tuarts all grey-green
and huge, further upriver;
malaleucas too.

In the water we have to dodge
the odd fallen tree.
“How long do you think it takes 
a log to decompose in the water?”
Katie asks.

There are one or two pied cormorants
shifting positions on the dry parts
of fallen logs.

Towards the end of our paddles
it starts raining softly—warm
rain spun inland by a cyclone 
further north, off the coast. 
The drops hit slowly,
deliberately.
“Let’s see if we can avoid them.”
But we don’t need to. It is
warm, and still, and we are 
happy to sit in the boat
and watch the way the rain
falls into water with a round
splash—the whole surface 
of the river drumming to life 
as if little crickets or frogs were splashing.
It is more an experience 
of water rising up from specific spots
than of water falling down…

….here, where rivers meet,
where currents meet,
where spiritual streams
and streams of time
do meet.