Unusual morning just as it begins
to warm up for several days.
The seabreeze is in early,
as it has been over the last week
or so.

I swim at North Cott
then cut across to the lake.

There’s bardoongooba
the shoveler, back for the first time
in quite a while.

Two ngoonan teals
are out in the open,
as are a yet black duck with three 
young ducklings who, 
in the centre of the lake,
look like they’re crossing
a vast ocean.

Wimbin the pink ear
is out and about in this southern part,
as are a couple of boodoo
blue bills,
both of whom have been
hanging out in the northern part
of the lake.

Near the gazebo,
later,
wayan the white-faced heron
comes in to land on a dead log,
scattering a couple of wimbin.

There’s a change in the air today.
Perhaps most noticeable 
in the switching of wind
I notice on the drive home.
The seabreeze has stoped, 
about 11am, and it has gone
offshore, again.
Strange.

I pick up our car from the service place
and at the last minute 
decide to take
my afternoon walk at the lake.
This I rarely ever do.
The only time I’m usually here 
is the morning.
And today—this afternoon—
it seems a different lake.

Earlier in the day I’d sat on a train
and looked down on it
as I glided by—a faint sliver
of water seen for a moment
then gone.
The whole green tree mass of it
shaped like some 
bowl, the whole scene seen
in more of single wholeness,
cupped in green.

Now I walk the water’s edge, again,
as per usual, though the light is all wrong—
it comes at me from the western edge
so the morning shady spot is now in full Sun.
The wind whips in from the southwest—
not totally unusual in winter, 
but it now seems somehow more forceful,
more violent; birak afternoon
wind of oceanic light
and air.

I stand on the jetty, unusually in shade,
and enjoy there a moment 
the darkness of it,
the wind behind
calmed slightly by the trees.

On the western edge trees bring shade
in places, but not much cover
from the wind.
Shadows stretch from their base out across the water.

At the gazebo there are people taking photos or video
while they throw limestone rocks in the water.
‘Turtle hunting?’ I venture.
‘No, we’re making a movie
and we need an image of a bubbling spring.
‘You know there are turtles down there too?’
Silence.
Then another big plop.
‘That looks like it might be the shot,’
the shooter says to the thrower.

I walk on around the rest of the lake,
the Sun and wind mostly behind me.

And then I get to the parkland
where in the warmer months
I chart a course from shady tree
to shady tree.
Now, much if not most of the place
is in shadow.
I wander across,
only a few spots where 
light still creeps in.

I arrive at the lake gazebo this morning
and there are two older women 
leaning over the northern edge
looking down into the clear water.
I immediately think of turtles.

We say our good mornings, but it 
seems like they’ve been
looking at other things.

As they head off up the ramp
one of them says, ‘no turtles’.
But something inside me says,
‘today there’s one here’.

I look all around in the lit up areas,
where the water is clear under a still surface,
strands of grass growing up,
a log or a rock here or there
on the brown bottom,
half a meter or more below
the top of the water.

(The gauge at the other end of the lake 
says 1.9 metres today.)

I still can’t see one.
I shift to the darker areas
in the shade of the gazebo’s roof.
The women are about to leave.

I take off my glasses, and there,
among the dark shadows,
is the dark form of a turtle
heading south.

‘Turtle,’ I call out to the women.
They come over.
‘You won’t believe me. He’s hard to see.
There, in the shadows.’

I’m right—he is hard to see, and they
don’t believe me.
We talk a while about turtle numbers,
quendas and crows.

And all the while he’s heading slowly south. 
I follow him in the shadow
and point him out again
as he shows whiter side flesh
under the shell.
‘Oh yes, I see the white strip—it’s moving,’
one says.

We follow him a little more.
He comes out into the full light.
I point him out with the shadow 
of my finger. ‘I don’t have either of 
your eyes,’ the other woman says.
‘He’s heading for the shadow of your neck,’ 
says her friend.
‘Oh!’.

Eventually we all slowly move off,
the women continuing their walk
as I return to the northern side of the gazebo,
just as guide dogs and their trainers arrive.

‘Find yourself a seat,’ the first person says to his dog.
I imagine the dog sitting on the little bench, but she
just sits on the floor.

I move off back up the ramp.
But suddenly I’m stuck by this little troop of dogs,
having been just yesterday
on top of one of the seven hills around
North Fremantle / Mosman Park, Mooro Country—
one of the seven dingo brothers, as the signs say.
I count the dogs.
Seven.

I see marangana the wood duck—
male and female—
paddling with three ducklings
close by. 

I haven’t seen any wood ducklings 
in a while.
To me they look like yet
Pacific black ducklings.
And I’m surprised 
when a group of 
yet try to pluck at them,
sending the
tiny things
skimming across the water
or briefly ducking
under.

Reminds me of how easy it is
to mistake an adolescent coot
with an Australasian grebe.
How fixed we can get in our concepts,
till that’s all we see,
and how the context—looking for mothers,
seeeing whether they dive—
both spatial and temporal
can save us 
from error.
Waiting, waiting,
to decide.

Today I’m at the lake jetty,
out of the wind.

Manatj the white corella
is in the fig tree
further to the east.
He is making noise—
one cocophanous choir.

At one point, 
their shrieks and cries
rise a level of fear,
of apprehension,
of caution.
And then I see it—
a sleek raptor, no bigger than manatj,
gliding into the upper branches.
He is darker than a kestrel,
likely a hobby.
Manatj doesn’t leave,
but sings his fearful song.

I wonder what he’s afraid of—
being of the same size as the raptor.
And then I realise
I don’t think I’ve ever seen 
a baby manatj
or manatj nest.

Lately I’ve been walking—
late Kambarang, early Birak—
through the unburnt kindling
of the shedded skin
of introduced eucalypts.

They’ve been planted on the 
old golfcourse
now parkland
by the edge of Galbamaanup 
Lake Claremont.

Ghost gums, I think.
Their bark crackles,
crispy,
like rock-hard cardboard,
as I walk over it,
even on a bed of spongy grass
beneath.

It sounds to me of fires
unmet, unspent,
appointments unkept.

I cannot burn it—
I’d be locked up;
anyone would.

Here, conditions are
no longer right.
Here, there is no longer
fire.

But I, I continue
to also walk this shoreline—
between old and new,
between burned and unburned,
between fire and no fire,
with other humans
too,
aflame.

Arriving at the gazebo today,
the lake arrives too—
the world beyond it
also flowing in,
down each and every tributary
to this place.

And I realise,
I am the lake.
Realised by sight.

I am the kwirlam swamp hen
feeding its young the softer
part of the rushes,
then saving some for myself.

I am the yet Pacific Black duck
mother and ducklings in a line
further out in the centre.

I am the coot diving down 
with back legs frogging
to get the best grass.

I am the marangana wood ducks,
the nyimarak shelducks,
the yet under the figtrees
waiting for what’s falling.
I’m the cygnets there,
growing slowly further
from my parents.
I’m the water level also falling,
just above 2m now
on the guage.

I’m the ibis that think about landing,
the wayan white-faced heron
looking for land.

I’m the flowering thick-leaved blue fan flowers,
the white blossom of paperbarks, tea trees
and other maleleucas.
I’m the brown of the water
with green grass emerging.

The kakak small pied cormorant
working the edges for frogs
I am; 
the frog that’s calling no longer.

The dragonflies blue or grey or red,
that’s me; the welcome swallows
with nest in gazebo
now fallen,
this year no longer necessary.

I’m the egret over by the east side. 
Boodoo the bluebill and kadar the musk duck I cannot
see, that’s me. 
Same as yerrigan the turtle down there,
unseen.
The beginning flowering of eucalypts
with bees, also me.

The solitary swan that preens; the 
cygnet now out on its own,
now back to the parents,
I am. 

This lake—that I am.
All that is firm,
and all that flows through.
The world flowing through. 
All that I am.

Day before new moon
and there are late Kambarang,
second-spring early-summer storms,
with hale and lightening, 
flash flooding and thunder.

We barely touch the edge of it.

At night, after sunset
I go out, looking east, 
seeing lightening
brighten up horizon clouds,
above and beyond hills,
probably with water running,
out into the wheatbelt.

I turn towards the west,
where the last light of sun
that’s left 
lingers a little longer.
There is a slight offshore wind,
but nothing really.
It is dark on the ocean shoreline,
with the lights of the port
and the light of the horizon
and ships
winking in from the edges.

I leave my gear
and jump in,
almost fully dark 
in this spot,
and go under.

New moon moisture.
New moon dark.

Pacific black ducklings—
four—
are paddling out in front of their mother,
no longer in her watery wake
and slipstream paddling—
now the mother glides behind.

The swan cygnets
are spending time
away from their parents.

The grasses reach up from below 
the sinking water’s surface.

There are places on Earth
that teach of 
the mysteries of old.
We go there today,
carrying
the mysteries of the now,
while tomorrow’s
mysteries come trickling in,
seedlike,
on the stream of the future.