Some times or rather some days I think that I live in Paradise

Other moments I wonder how the hell to get out of this disaster area of the universe.

Depends,

Depends on the thoughts cruising thru my mind, the feelings lodged in my body, the book I am reading, the news I have heard, any number of things and equably none of them.

Next door lives a farmer, his family has been around this valley for a few generations but I am catching up now that Kingston has moved in.

They cleared the land, made fence posts out of red gums and burnt the rest- rubbish they call it.

What trees did survive by some fluke were ring barked and now they die.

They are cow farmers ,beef not milk and they work hard,

chasing their cows ‘hup hup hup’ waving sticks herding them to the yards where they lock up the mums who cry for their babies or lock up the babies who cry with their mums .

that can go on day and night for three days.

It is torture but they call it farming.

 

They also like to shoot…

kangaroo wombat rabbit duck wallaby and anything else that dares to cross their bare paddocks.

The whole family mum dad and the kids get out  with cousins and friends and Utes with lights and any sort of calibre gun.

They  can shoot for hours.

It is loud in our forest and in our house.

We do not sit comfortably when it is happening

but we all have rights eh .

That is the mantra .

We can all do what we want according to law

but the law does not necessarily serve those without a voice, without a vote like the wattle or the centipede.

 

in here I walk , stopping to hug the  kurrajong in full lemon flower.

I scan the wild cherry trees for ripe berries.

I pick up scribbly bark and try to read its poem.

I crunch over sticks and curly leaves thru fern and candle flowers over fallen mossy logs pushing past the cutty grass and the vines that have come to stay.

a forest humming with diversity,

an evolving situation and possible paradise.

 

looking out the lounge window early this morning we see a red necked wallaby with a bubba leaning languidly out of the pouch.

she is sniffing at our latest enclosure trying to find the way in thru the fishing net. I noticed her scats in there a day or so ago .

she gives up, perhaps because she can feel us gorking at her.

 

we have identified a new arrival, the spotted turtle-dove,

a pair of them dagging around in our garden for a few days in their dusky pinkish brown coat with the crazy black and white spotted collar on the back of their necks.

 

the visual feasts that make up my day are many,

the auditory field  that my body falls into from the dawn chorus to the last hurrah and on thru the night with owl fox glider possum  is as fine a symphony as has ever played.

no human voice  can match the melody of the grey shrike thrush, the piping tune of the butcher bird.

no  instrument can play the caroling rhapsody of the magpie or the sweet chatter of the parrots.

this sweeping earth opera from wren to currawong includes  breezes from other places ,scuffles bounces thumps slaps of feet and tail on earth , leaf whispers, bees blissing on blossoms, claws clicking on bark underscored by the sensual slither of snake.

 

there is never not a moment of life breathing.

always life living, replenishing going about the business of evolution.

always a flower tumbling to the ground from the height of the canopy.

a seed unfurling

a worm burrowing

a frog swimming

ant building

turtle basking

lizards walking over my toes.

 

always within a plenty full forest  is colour and vibrancy,  music and passion,

birth death and renewal.

it is into this wonder that I wake each day

into this paradise.

and even though the world intrudes upon our boundaries and our neighbours pick up guns

and even though the radio squeaks of horrors happening

the song of life never misses a beat

and it is up to me  to stay in tune.