Category Archives: Sun in the Water

Sometimes that is Enough

Walking upriver Tuesday afternoon
on a day of high 30s,
the wind and sun behind me.

The usual houses, the usual plants,
the usual sky and flowing water.

And then a flash of something large
flying upriver slightly below me
on the edge of the cliff.
I lose it in the trees.

Suddenly I’m switched on,
and begin speculating what it might be.

A little further up the view opens again,
and there he is, large and dark-backed
with whiter underside,
heading upriver on the north side,
gliding above and over the little jetty
opposite the yacht clubs,
then up onto a perch
in an area of bushland very hard
to access.
There he pauses, looking down at the river.

I keep watching.
He changes spots at one point.

Dorn dorn.
The osprey. 

Likely the very same who used to— 
and maybe still does—perch
on the streetlight of the old bridge
they’re building over,
before flying upriver 
to nest, possibly near Jennalup 
Blackwall Reach.

And sometimes that is enough.

The Heart That Follows

Tonight I’m pondering the
options of the ‘following heart’
of our time.

Either it follows the perceptions
of the senses and the intellect
of a one-sided materialistic science,
slowly growing colder, maybe dying.

Or, in feeling the lack of warmth
supplied by such science, it can turn
back to some older warmth,
back to a faith
of earlier times, though splitting
itself at the same time
from the thought lines
of modern science.

Finally, it can choose to
start with modern science
but push through from abstraction
to genuine perception
into the true nature
of things, courageously
walking with the intellect
of the head,
though forging for itself,
in warmth,
its own kind of
intelligence.

Understanding Evil, Understanding Love

Peter Meagher, SBS News January 7

Tonight a story about the final funeral
of the victims at Bondi.

Peter Meagher was a retired detective
attending the event as a freelance photographer.

After a while, the story cut to the eulogy from the wife
he met and married only later in life.

She said something along the lines of him changing
the lives of many, and that, “he was the best thing
that happened to mine.”


Eloise Worledge, SBS News January 12

A 50-year old cold case has been reopened
with a million-dollar reward
for information about the disappearance
of an eight-year old girl
from her Melbourne bedroom.

The police speak of remains.

The story ends with a parent saying
that her disappearance “changed our lives forever.”
And that she would “always be loved.”

Eva Schloss

I’ve taken to turning the brightness down on the laptop
and just listening to the news.
Tonight they’re talking mostly about Venezuela,
and the kidnapping of a president
from many different angles.

There are follow up reports about the shooting
in Bondi.

Much later in the bulletin there is a story about
the death of Anne Frank’s step-sister,
Eva Schloss.
She fled Austria with her family for Amsterdam
when the war broke out.
They were sent to Auschwitz
when they were betrayed.

Her father and sister died there;
she and her mother survived.

For many years she apparently couldn’t talk
about the war.
But once she started,
she made it her life’s mission
to keep talking.

I don’t fully know why this story hit me so.
But it did.

The Kingfisher

I’m back at the lake this year,
thinking I may have left it behind.

I’m on the verge of illness, with clear skies
and a gentle south westerly.

I get to the gazebo and am slightly disappointed
there’s someone already sitting there,
not looking like they’ll be moving soon.

A woman, about 70, faces north, reading a bird book.
Yes, I look over her shoulder, but then
I settle in, standing, looking west.

Something lands in the paperbark in the water nearby,
slightly bigger than a honeyeater, but then I lose it.
Soon after, there’s something on a branch, facing me,
chest mostly white, turning itself slightly to reveal
a flashing blue of wings and an oversized beak.
Kanyinak.

“Kingfisher,” I say to her, not knowing how she’ll respond,
“probably sacred.”
“What?” she replies.
“Kingfisher,” I say again, and point to the branch.
“Oh!” she cries, “You know I have never seen one,”
she says in Scandinavian accent, “even though
I have been looking for many years.”

At that moment, he turns around
and gives us a full view of his blue-green back.
“Oh!” she says again.

“I saw you with a bird book, so I thought you might
be interested,” I venture. “I’ve only ever seen a couple here.”

We end up talking for the next hour or more.

“Why do you come here looking at birds?” she asks.
“Well, I guess we have many to look at.”
“Yes, but we also have many in Sweden—
there are birds everywhere.”
She points at the birds on the nearby signs:
“I have seen many of these here,
but not this one: the kite, or the kestrel.”
“They’re here sometimes, so too other raptors like
hobbies and harriers,” I reply, but we have to translate sometimes
from Noongar to English to Latin to Swedish
and back again.

“And I have seen the ducks,” she says.
“Have you seen the musk duck or the bluebill?” I ask.

“I tend more to hear birds
than see them,” she says.
“I am part of a group for birds in Sweden.”

Soon after, a female and an adolescent bluebill appear,
and I point them out—she seems dubious, mainly due to their
lack of blue bills. But then she says, “look, there is the male!”

“And over there, near the trees, that bigger duck, sitting lower
in the water, with its tail up, that’s a musk,” I tell her.

We talk about colonisation, about the USA, about all the
signage for everything in Australia.
We talk about volunteerism, about her family here,
about the approach of 2029 (200 years of Western Australia).
We talk about migration and multiculturalism.
We talk about places in Sweden I have been,
places in Western Australia she has seen.

Soon after, a harrier appears to the north.
“Oh!” she says again.

There is more.
Eventually I feel it is time to go.

“My wife is probably wondering where I am,”
I say. She asks for my contact details.
“You have the same initials as my daughter.”
“What is your work?” I ask.
“I am a psychologist.”

“Thank you for pointing out the kingfisher,” she says,
“I will always remember that.”