Sentinel BY SAMUEL WAGAN WATSON
“Fishers and hunters home return
To where the family fires burn.
Food now and merriment,
Bellies full and all content,
Around the fires at wide nightfall,
This is the happiest time of all.”
From “The Food Gatherers”
by the late (Aunty) Oodgeroo Noonuccal.
The midden remains; a material witness on a promontory or beach-head over the expanses of epoch and eon, where tributes were held in worship of richer seasons. Festivities; not so Dionysian in revelry, but more rainbow-serpentine in respect, these ceremonial milestones that would acknowledge the midden a monument to a spiritual pathos of economical sharing. Sharing and nurturing: graces now almost driven from this land.
The midden remains, where elements once convened in the most sacred of communions; earth, water, fire and wind, mused in the easy linguistics of sea breeze, tongues lathered with salt. Feast and Dream the prosperity of the lucky and chosen peoples, custodians in the world of the living and plenty.
The midden remains, but the sea is threatened, the earth torn, the fires exhausted, and the sky tarnished, the people scattered. Conquerors look upon you as a ‘trash heap’ and not a factotum from an ochre Babylon. You; the treasured ‘debitage’, are preyed upon by roads, skyscrapers and desecration. Your selected bones and matrix of lithium flakes are indecipherable in the wake of the new comers ignorance. The shells in your structure form the unworn necklace of ghosts, held together by song-lines locked in an obscure servitude of silence.
The midden remains; guardian to memory.
The midden remains sacred.
The midden remains, sentinel.
Copyright © 2014 by Samuel Wagan Watson
To where the family fires burn.
Food now and merriment,
Bellies full and all content,
Around the fires at wide nightfall,
This is the happiest time of all.”
From “The Food Gatherers”
by the late (Aunty) Oodgeroo Noonuccal.
The midden remains; a material witness on a promontory or beach-head over the expanses of epoch and eon, where tributes were held in worship of richer seasons. Festivities; not so Dionysian in revelry, but more rainbow-serpentine in respect, these ceremonial milestones that would acknowledge the midden a monument to a spiritual pathos of economical sharing. Sharing and nurturing: graces now almost driven from this land.
The midden remains, where elements once convened in the most sacred of communions; earth, water, fire and wind, mused in the easy linguistics of sea breeze, tongues lathered with salt. Feast and Dream the prosperity of the lucky and chosen peoples, custodians in the world of the living and plenty.
The midden remains, but the sea is threatened, the earth torn, the fires exhausted, and the sky tarnished, the people scattered. Conquerors look upon you as a ‘trash heap’ and not a factotum from an ochre Babylon. You; the treasured ‘debitage’, are preyed upon by roads, skyscrapers and desecration. Your selected bones and matrix of lithium flakes are indecipherable in the wake of the new comers ignorance. The shells in your structure form the unworn necklace of ghosts, held together by song-lines locked in an obscure servitude of silence.
The midden remains; guardian to memory.
The midden remains sacred.
The midden remains, sentinel.
Copyright © 2014 by Samuel Wagan Watson
My Grandmother, The Siren, BY TAHLEE WALSH
I'll return to the ocean,
I’ll be swimming in the bay as a mermaid again”
I know you're there Nan.
You grace the ocean floors.
Swim with the dolphins.
Sun bake and take solace in hidden coves.
Explore the eastern coastlines.
I feel your presence when the water hits my toes.
When the sun kisses the waves.
When the sparkling light shine through the ripples.
You are my siren.
A lavender tail with long curly locks entangled with shells that look softly against your smooth skin.
The skin I miss the touch of.
The body I miss being in loving embrace.
I'll dive to the deepest depths and hold as long as I can; Serene.
For a moment I’m one of you.
Looking above, the water becomes my sky.
Like a mirror fragmented by the waves.
But I’m not, I return to my world. I leave yours.
Footsteps in the sand are my evidence of returning.
I look out to the ocean, I feel my Nanna.
You are my sight, you are my siren.
Poem and artwork by Tahlee Walsh 2014
I’ll be swimming in the bay as a mermaid again”
I know you're there Nan.
You grace the ocean floors.
Swim with the dolphins.
Sun bake and take solace in hidden coves.
Explore the eastern coastlines.
I feel your presence when the water hits my toes.
When the sun kisses the waves.
When the sparkling light shine through the ripples.
You are my siren.
A lavender tail with long curly locks entangled with shells that look softly against your smooth skin.
The skin I miss the touch of.
The body I miss being in loving embrace.
I'll dive to the deepest depths and hold as long as I can; Serene.
For a moment I’m one of you.
Looking above, the water becomes my sky.
Like a mirror fragmented by the waves.
But I’m not, I return to my world. I leave yours.
Footsteps in the sand are my evidence of returning.
I look out to the ocean, I feel my Nanna.
You are my sight, you are my siren.
Poem and artwork by Tahlee Walsh 2014
