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.

There is another sun
rising
out of
the centre of the Earth.

It rises to all sides.

It rises
with the human being.

What role for those
who can experience 
freedom
and the truth of this?

Can it be anything more
than to merely report
well and truly
of what one has seen?

In doing any more than this
we trespass upon
the freedom
of others 
to determine
for themselves
their own 
course of action.

How do I, in truth,
report of freedom
and in so doing
leave you free?

***

It is up to each of us
to make ourselves free,
but we can support one another
in this striving.

Every place 
and all that inspires it
now seeks to be
in service of the 
spirit of the Earth
as a whole.

But it is up to human beings
to recognise this,
and say 
‘I am that’— 
to say ‘the spirit
of the Earth
lives in me.’

In so doing,
evil can also be
transformed
to the good—
can be embodied
in its rightful place.

I went back to a beach today
that I swam at almost daily 
for 10 years.

So I know it fairly well.
But I hadn’t been there much
for the last 20 years
or so.

I was shocked today
to see much of it
had washed away.
A large cliff face greeted me 
almost at the end of the steps.

People were hunkered up
against a fenceline
on the sand.

I looked down to the teahouse
and the water was lapping
at the concrete stairs.

The tide was only half way
between high and low,
and it was rising.

Gradually, slowly,
the Earth is being eaten away.

But where do things go 
when they disappear,
when they’re ‘extinct’?

Something new is growing, though,
in the midst of this.

It grows in the Earth’s
invisible foundations,
and in our own.

And it will meet there
all those old friends
we might otherwise 
have lost.