We walk with the American family
east to Castle Rock. 
On the way I name wattle,
peppermint/wanil, 
yonga/kangaroo,
ocean/wardan,
quenda.

The wind blows into our faces,
but we shelter behind the rock,
and the water is still.
The sculpted leaves of the wattle,
waiting for yellow flowers,
the weeping and oily scent of the wanil
peppermint.
Yonga pauses from his eating, close by,
and watches us, before hopping off.
The ocean goes and goes,
whipped up by the morning wind.
Quenda a little thing, like another
face of the Australian mammal archetype.

All these, like everything else,
named 
by human beings,
as the Earth
and we too are named…
Love of the Earth 
allowing this.

On one level the river mouth
is not open—a sand bar across its flow
into the ocean;
on another level it is open wide.

My cousin and I inflate our kayak
and paddle upriver,
turning as the river turns,
headed for the mouth
of the cave,
passing by those
faces in the limestone,
paddling on.

There is wind.
There is glass.
There are rising fish.
There are paperbarks.

The water is clear;
the bottom brown.

We sit and drift.
Wooditchup.
The cave and mouth
engulf us
without us stepping foot ashore.

Then the sound of an osprey.
The landing of another.
The sighting of another
sitting silently.
More.

The wind comes up from the south,
but swirls a little down here.
As it all swirls,
blowing first from outside in
but then from inside out;
first from one point to another,
then from a central,
limitless source
to everywhere,
though quiet,
forceful,
seen in stillness—
as people
cross from one side
of a river
to another.

We drive the road
by the limestone caves
down towards Bornup forrest
and the karri trees.

We drive in a bit, then walk 
a quiet backroad
of orange-brown dirt
and limestone teeth
poking up at times.

Katie and I walked this same
stretch last summer,
drier.

The karris stand as straight as ever,
their bark having peeled off, white
already beneath, leafed beardings up the trunks
or lignotubers sprouting up below,
following the fire of a couple of years ago.

Beneath them, on the forrest floor,
mostly hazels, but also bracken ferns.
Not many birds.

At one point I stop and ponder a moment,
we here—Americans. Australians—
human beings as namers, naming all these things.
Old names, like karris.
I try to find the depth
of the being of the thing in front of me,
then try to match it to the depth of the name
that rises up from within.
Karri.
And I say it out loud.
“Karri.”
And the world is restored.

And from this,
something is
and can be 
made.

So often I hear his song
at home,
at the lake,
even down here
in Quindalup.

I don’t recall it ever being so common—
maybe I was deaf to him before,
maybe we now find ourselves
drawn to the same places.

And though I hear him often,
I don’t usually see him,
as if he’s content to give
voice to the whole landscape
though the single point
of focus and body
is not required to be seen.

But today, he appears not just
nearby on branch of tree,
but on our breakfast table. 
He stands on the far edge, then hops around,
all black and white, though smaller
than a magpie,
more muscular than a lark,
more rounded than a wattlebird,
larger than honeyeaters,
black hooded, curious.

There is no food.
There is no song.

But we stay together like
that, a little while,
the grey butcherbird and me,
knowing what he is capable of,
knowing the way he experiences
and expresses this place,
revealing the small form
that gives voice to it.

The whole in part,
condensed.

We walk the start of the Meelup Trail
for a taste before 
the sun sets and moon begins
to rise.

It’s an eclipse already
somewhere just below the horizon—
a thin line of clouds
just above it.

We drive in a mad
lunar ticking rush
to Meelup Beach
and arrive to a full carpark
and the sound
of crowds cheering.

The top of the orange 
red moon is peeking through the 
top of the horizon line
of clouds.
And then more of it,
and more, 
and more,
until it is fully up, and round 
and glowing more golden.

There are kangaroos eating 
on the grass in front of us.
There are crowds of people 
all around.

We walk down to the beach
and three of us jump in.
The water is still and 
relatively warm.

A group of people
listen to music at the western end
of the beach in 
silent disco mode.

We get out and walk back
towards the car. The moon
has become lighter and lighter,
moving behind, between, 
through clouds—
a ‘staircase’ appearing
at times on the ocean below.

Sun, earth, moon
all in a row.
Samesized,
the whole of it—
the Earth,
human beings—
living, alive.

My American relatives are here.
They drive behind us 
on the freeway towards 
Wardandi Country—Dunsborough.
Thursday evening mid March
and it’s raining.

The sky is grey in places,
clear in others.
The sun bursts through
and a rainbow lights up
to the east—low, clear—
a second one on its shoulder.

There are boodalung pelicans up there,
there are waalitch eagles,
there are kestrels.
We cross bridges 
across waterways
as the rain comes and goes.
We cross countries.

The sun goes behind clouds,
then bursts out again,
and the eucalypts glow
a shimmering gold.

The place is alive.
The world is alive.
Everything seen
and waiting to be seen.

We listen to Australian music
and look out on Australian Country.
There is no separation.
I am out there with it,
in the rain, in the rainbow,
in the birds
and roads 
and creek crossings.
In the rivers
and trees and sunlight 
leaves. 
In the music of it.
And I am grateful.

Behind us—my American relatives,
with their own connections to this place.

Today at the lake the water levels are low.
It looks like there are salt remnants
on the drying mud
like there hasn’t been
in previous years.

I only see kwirlam the swamphen,
nyalkaniny the white ibis,
and wayan the white-faced heron
down on the dry bed.
Wardong the crow and
djiddy djiddy the wagtail
are also busy on the edges.
Kaa Kaa the kookaburra
swoops wardong at one point.

There is a roof of soft alto stratus, 
and a gentle south westerly blows,
keeping the whole morning cooler.

I go to my usual spot on the east side.
There are two people sitting under 
the eucalypt on the bench.
They’re talking about the patriarchy
and societal values.
I imagine them late teens, early twenties,
uni students maybe.
But when I walk on I see that the boy
is maybe 18, the girl maybe 13.

I walk to the southern jetty and sit
under the figs.
To the north, the lake is all grass.
The sound of lorikeets fills the sky,
like they tend to do more at sunset
and sunrise.

I say the name of the lake in Noongar
and in English.
I see what effect that has—
of bringing the depths of the thing 
into relation with the depths of the name—
what effect it has in me.

(I suppose that the named lake will live on 
after the lake itself has 
dried up completely 
into nothing physical left.
It will all be a higher water element then.)

We name and so (re)make the world,
as the Earth itself is filled 
by what lives and weaves 
in its true name.

And so we come to know and (re)make places
by what they are, but also by 
what they are 
now that the Earth itself
has been renamed.

Within the human being 
the world is restored.
The depth of the name
meets the depth
of the named.

From this the world is
re-born.

Sky.
Ocean.
Sun.
Water. Kep. Eau. Aqua.

Karak. The red-tailed black cockatoo.

Only the human being can name things.
Only the human being
can remake the world.

There are flocks of karak
the red-tailed black cockatoo
circling the city.

There are flocks of bandiny
the black, white and yellow striped
New Holland honeyeater
chirping in frontyard trees.

Each evening there is a flock of planets
left behind by the Sun—
all of them visible
above the horizon.

At the lake 
there is one Pacific
black duck
left behind,
hardly moving
from a small pond 
on the eastern side.
He is joined by swamphens,
white ibis,
and one white-faced heron.
Wardong the crow sits
on the fence
and eats little red 
saltbush berries.

There is wise guidance
to the flocking birds—
their ‘I’ hovers above
each species,
directing them where to fly.

There is wise guidance
to each planet—
though calculable in their movements
they send down their influences still.

There is wise guidance
to the lake
coming from deep within the Earth.

And there is wise guidance to the Earth,
filled with multiplicity of being.
All of it permeated now
by the Sun that stepped down;
by the one Sun that, 
into it,
set.

Waxing crescent early March.
Two more Moons until Easter.

Today, all the planets are in the evening sky,
with Mercury, Saturn and Venus
closely following the Sun;
Jupiter around mid sky,
and Mars bringing up the tail.

This evening the Moon has joined them,
just above the planets
closest to the Sun—
between them and Jupiter,
and a little higher.

The now-set Sun shines off
the Moon’s lower left-hand side,
just a sliver,
and bounces down to Earth.
The rest of it—
the Moon’s dark round disc—
absorbs that deeper light
from the Sun.

The surface light
holds the deeper light.

Like the Mother
holds the Son.