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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