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Oysters

Shaping shell through sentiment in sediment,

something like an initiation into blood love

unbroken

//

Across the oceanic Country that is

silver of salt of mother tongue

to the place where you always are

there is a relic beneath the water

which is also a relic in itself

//

I will give you an oyster

to press the softness against your heart,

to sense the ebb of sharp edge against salted skin

and watch the purple rind change under moonlight

//

If a grain of sand has relived the myth

and become a pearl, iridescent

behind shy oyster walls not yet ajar,

then I will extract the myth from the stars

and give you

a pearl,

over and over again,

which is to say

I will give you my heart.

Other Words for Love

The sand moves around you now

you who is crystalline

draped in seaweed and salt and sorry

a mollusc laid down by the tide

awash in the light of silver foam

and seaside loam

all full moon mother of milky pearl

strung against the sky

and memory of shore

making soft edge

like amber glass rolled soft

in the river mouth

while the sand dunes

now making a home of the mangroves

are pandanus roots

looped in on themselves like a belt

holding this oceanic world up

and further back again

a temple of banksia

clay and smoke

always smoke

and other words for love.

All Ways Always

It begins with wattle blossom yellow

in the crimson womb of morning sky,

wrapped in a blanket of smoke

winding off the mountain range,

all uninterrupted honeysuckle banksia nectar

tapped onto an open, patient palm.

The moon appears, unassuming, as if a gift

among clouds hung full of first song clapsticked

and sung across treetop canopy

through rock pool through ocean floor through

pipi shells taking their first breath

and red-bellied deadly slither

while light washes across the earth like water

making way for ceremony, making beauty

in dew and daylight and lack of,

all golden glow of a land to be held

with care, with custodianship

knowing all ways it always was

always will be all ways.

Gathered

We gather the kindling

our kin

the tree-branch-leaf-litter

for flame famish,

sit beneath

the smoke the stars

– unclothe the constellations

of their newer names –

and listen for

the s p a c e between

Many hands many

hearts working

gather to carry this bowl

of tree of river red gum

or something else

small and soft and

also sacred,

all carved branch birthmarked

with two snakes

watching their young hatch

watching their world be reborn

Follow the curve of vertebrae

and scald and meeting place,

hold it to the rhythm

of your chest

and let it mimic that of

the land beneath your feet,

carry it with care with sovereignty

to the stone to the river

gather the water

that carries you

Soak the leaves green

don’t leave here

without offering more than you take

without treading lightly lovingly

So gather

not it not oil not earth,

it is not yours not ours,

work with not against and

work to make new smoke

make song make sacred

Light the fire

bathe and birth be birthed in the blue of both

so we can gather listen watch feel

for the stories shared

for Dreamings dreamt

and wisdom woven, kept alight kept alive

Gather

we gather

g a t h e r e d.

Poetry by Aboriginal poet and weaver Tais Rose Wae

Second Skin

When I talk about the

heartbeat

I am talking about that rise and fall

– pregnant with wisdom –

the crest and cavern

that carries us, belonging

to the backbone

that birthed us,

the river red gum

sapped and scared

where bark was stripped

to cradle

salt / seed / snake /

found fruit and other food,

or water otherwise waded through

at high tide.

It is the landscape library,

or what to them

is arid land,

the terra that their cheek and tongue trip over,

their nullius which is to us

our sentient second skin,

mapped

on fingertip

and carried by lip.

From a Place, Unknown

Acacia all black

from the bone cup

and a daughter born

with a blue quandong

sucked to the stone

between her lips,

the shadow

of a camphor laurel leaf

red bellied and

heavy at the surface,

its branch eaten smooth

by a current of pearls

and the velvet

at the heart of a banksia

broken under a foreign heel.

Lomandra’s new shoot

ripe for basket weaving

and a tongue

speaking language

and something else

for those of us

who can’t remember how,

with words wilted

that don’t touch the ground,

too bitter in the mouth

for the familiar heartbeat

of bush:

lo

man

dra

and other plants, uncommon,

whose seed need burning

and knowing hands

and then the blood

resilient and resinous like sap

falling inward,

beating for country

I do not know

behind eyes open,

dreaming of dreaming

and undreamt too.

Under ashen silt

and the grey in between,

a quartz casting light

through muddied waters

alive with freshwater grayling

and if you listen closely,

you can hear the gold

in the riverbed.

Miro and Body Boab

A gumnut plucked from a fertile tree

carried across red earth

- dustless in the stillness -

to my womb, my arms, my breast.

You who is within

/ sensing sunlight

from this same shared body.

Through my skin sunned and swollen with you,

strong as your Noongar namesake,

the size of an avocado – or then again,

a boab –

listening to the kookaburras

and of course, already knowing

their language.

I will cradle you in the rapids

– forehead ochred –

in the water of the earth

that conceived you.

I will guide you through the smoke

of new green leaves

as the desert-quandong crimson of your blood

pools from your placenta

which we bury

so Country knows you

have arrived.

And when you do arrive

I will show you the

earth

sun

ocean

stars

and by that, I mean

I will show you

that you are home.

Yellow Gully

in childhood

we read the landscape

in a different language

rode the curves

of yellow gully

alive with wattle

and it was flower nectar

tapped onto open palms

licked clean

my brother armed with

spear and arrow and story

and fists full of hair

my pockets dragged with

moss and river rocks and rhyme

and the clouds full of song

admitted that everything began

with the sun at which we squinted