Johanna

Johanna

Johanna 1                                                                                           15/12/11

I stand upon the brink of these southern seas,

in view the rushing white, and bright aquamarine.

The beautiful chaos, the unknown of old,

fatefully claiming explorers too bold.

I stand upon this rugged southernmost shore,

which plagues the imaginary of those gone before.

The rumbling waters, the warm wind hums her riff,

spritely scaling each lofty sandstone cliff.

Johanna 2                                                                                          15/12/11

Dad called him Joe, that little tan dog.

He welcomed us both, wandering up to our camp,

he smiled brightly, the soft breeze ruffling his fur.

Transients we were, but for he this was home, from

the rushing of the waves, to the crisp air on the

sloping hillside. Contented, he lay about the reserve

yet wandered free at will.

Let to ponder, we suspected a life for Joe both filled

with joy, and at once swept with swells of melancholy.

As friends came and formed a temporal place of refuge,

a site upon which old Joe found communion with creatures

of heart. Still, on those evenings cold and grey, when the brutal

gale raged through the vale from the west, when the warmth of

a hand, and the sweet meats contingent upon the human

encampment were long gone – Joe lay alone,

in a dark hollow in the coastal scrub.

He was himself intrinsicly intimate with the space,

inseparable was Joe from the Sheoaks, whispering

tales of folks from times gone by. To the balding heights

Joe belonged, and his was each tuft of grass upon the

ground.

To speak of Joe was to reference Johanna, for he was

a life form elemental to the region. He shifted freely

in a territory uniquely his; characterising place

as the wind shapes the cliff face, and the melody

of the wren is woven into the air, as the people come

and soon have gone – it was all one.

Johanna 3                                                                                          15/12/11

We respond.

Golden now, the grass over the dunes shimmers,

alive in the gentle breath exhaled upon the land.

The waves, they do not stop – we relish in what

is an unmitigable constant, beyond the force of our

hand.

It is a fare we watch, sink in the sky – slowly first,

before the sudden passing of the earth into shadow.

It is a corposant above the structures of the world,

from this vessel we set our eyes on that light in

fear and wonder.

Now darkened, the land runs vague in our minds.

Dusk is ever the end, the plunge beyond the known,

it resonates in the deep of our dislocated forms, ever

thrown back and forth on the sea of comparison,

strong, yet weak, large and still so insignificant.

We respond.

For breath – it is not ours, what is within us

is around us. We are the earth, and the waters

hold within us, and the air it is that shifts us.

Waters writhe before us, waters roll above us,

the breeze bears within the slighter, salene

seaspray.

The waves thunder as my blood, as my mother’s

heartbeat, as my father’s spirit.

Ever time evades, a moment gone, it slips

so fast, we cannot grasp it.

We breathe the wind, we cry the sea, our complex

structures return to dirt.

And soon enough I shall not sit here, soon five hundred

years shall I have slept in the heart of the earth,

whilst my spirit sings with the perpetual dawn –

for ever the sun is rising on the world, and

ever passing around the world is the

morning song.

Let that be my song. As night rests upon me I await

the first melody, echoing in the woods, brought on wing

across the sheer cliff tops. Messengers of the skies sing

to us a new day. We are created anew,

we rise into being once more.

Johanna 4                                                                                            16/12/11

Paths we form – creatures who clear a way;

linear, familiar.

Mild morning light reveals one way in the

hillside, a track roughly hewn in earth and

rock. Now wings waver, bodies gliding

through space; the graceful, sweeping

flight of the black cockatoo, to the speedy,

darting of the splendid fairy wren.

No path is made, their way is limitless,

passengers of the upper strata of

our world.

Yet, here below, we own and possess, crafting

lines, borders, encapsulating space; dividing,

alienating.

The Goldfinch lands briefly on the fence –

to him no more than a moments respite; no modes

of restraint, no means to orient.

The sun now breaks through in the east,

the dunes are lit and the sea cast gold. Upon the

sand our paths erased, the canvas cleared,

and I dare not descend from these heights and

impress upon the shore my own way.

For the sea has renewed; let that which was been

reclaimed beyond our touch remain for but a

moment.