The storm has strewn foam moats on the beach,
casting strange new cartographies on an already contested land.
Where once was symbiosis of people and shore,
a gentle-come-rough cycle of retreat and return,
now the newly crowned administrators seek commercial return on never ceded land.
When Bunjalong time was all that was known,
this meeting place of river head, ocean shore and cypress pine gathered within exchanges of ritual and trade.
Marking the land, proclaiming it sacred.
Middens, once precious, are now scattered by everyday racism.
Casual disregard for practices of belonging.
Many centuries passed.
And the quiet, silent guard of the Cypress Grove called Diggers returned from the war.
Their bodies were home.
In whole, or in part.
Fragments of war
lodged forever in
marrow
muscle
bone
heart.
But their souls.
Their souls were discarded
for freedom,
for mateship,
for all we hold dear.
And now,
they seep slowly from shell casings scattering distant battlefields,
whispering brokenness
on land,
barren,
for generations to come.
And yet.
And yet,
home again,
home again.
Jagged horrors,
maladjusting
to small town
niceties.
Those, who returned, heard the call of the sacred grove.
And,
hand-in-hand with wee ones born while they fought,
they drew their breath hard
(tamping down rising horrors)
the simple act of a seed planted,
cracked open with love,
grounded in hope for clinging redemption,
slight softenings for hard edged journeys of rebecoming.
Small hands tending gently the trees of those lost.
Lost-but-home hands finding, slowly, rough solace of bark.
The groves’ sure embrace.
The Sentinel Cypress.
Standing tall.
Even now.
Stardust Becoming 