No word for home

No word for home

Consider this, she said

The sparky woman ( French)

We have no word for home

For house of course and homeland

Vive la patrie

So much is in the meaning

Unspoken, understood

Geography and climate, native tongue

A part, but not the whole

Intangible, invisible

Except in certain lights

Like bonfire gleam or eclipse-glow

It's held within the heart

The tug of roots

The call of love

A memory of source

A place you left a life ago

Or refuge newly found

With welcome mat and hearth

A hook to hang your hat

Or maybe just, at crowded airport gate

A smile, two arms

Flung wide to fold you in

24th May 2010, Quantas Armidale to Sydney

Read the Runes

Read the Runes

You- artists- etch on zinc

With bitumen, a winding river

Long, important in your land

Plus fish and water creatures

In struggle to survive

On sacred rocks in ochre

Millennia long gone, you

-First inhabitants-

Draw lizards, leave your mark

We are sorry we are sorry

For the ruin we have wrought

By miracle/ geography

This rainforest, not despoiled

A work of art exuberant

Creation ever new

Strangler figs and monster ferns

Left to run amok

Symbiotic systems not yet trampled

Not destroyed

Do we read the runes and spot the signs

Give credence, heed the words

Are we sorry, are we sorry

For the ruin we have wrought?

May 19th 2010, Port Douglas, Queensland, for Lesley Labram, artist

'We are so sorry for what we did to your people' - comment in visitors' book left by child, at Aboriginal peoples' sacred site.

Song of Ancients

Song of Ancients

When the wind the wild is howling

Wolfpack baying

No moon night

When the world's a whirlwind spinning

Chaos raging

All in flight

When it's tumult tumult pounding

Senses screaming

Boundless fright

In the midst and in the maelstrom

In the eye of hurricane

You may hear the song they're singing

Song of ancients

Hear them singing

All the multitude the many

They are singing they are singing

Those who went before

Song of ancients

Hear them singing

Bringing word

That Peace will come

May 6th 2010, Yackandandah, Victoria.