Summer has come at last and I’m happy. My large garden that becomes almost a stranger to me through winter now welcomes me back. The bountiful rains we’ve had for the last six months have created a lushness, even a flamboyance here. Plants that I haven’t seen for years have turned up. In amongst it all are scuttling things – skinks, birds (particularly blue wrens, silver eyes and honeyeaters). And I think of the happiness of cats. My beautiful late cat Tinsel who loved these places and was too well fed, lovely-natured and just plain slow, to worry about birds, would have been brushing beneath the canopy in search of a cool, shady place to loll – just as I would have, as a kid.
I am loving this post Christmas period. Plenty of wholesome food in the fridge, house clean and cool, time to relax, watch some great docos and world movies. Had friends in for ‘Happy Hour’ yesterday – the hour that usually turns into four. I love these impromptu times of great conversation. Two friends Rita and Gerlinde and I talk a treat. The conversation cruises comfortably through topics of art, music, books, film, travel (past and anticipated), and deep things, for two of us, like negotiating life as new-ish singles.
I said I would tell you about my little holiday with my sister recently. We had three days at Semaphore in a cabin at the beach. What is it that makes holidays so special? Is relaxing so important? Is it the change of environment? The shedding of what needs to be done? Who doesn’t love to be near the sea? Do the people who live there eventually take it for granted?
So Erica and I had lunch the first day at The Largs Pier Hotel – a magnificent old edifice right on the esplanade. We sat out on the grand shady veranda, ate fish of the day and drank a biting cold Riesling. A perfect day – sea glinting, seagulls creating a soundtrack, kiosk across the road. People relaxed – lovers, families, children, the hand-in-hand elderly, dogs. Icecreams, slushies, fish and chips. The whole seaside package.
We thought we would watch a movie that evening but at beer o’clock we put out some nibbles – nuts, chips, a couple of nice cheeses, some hommus, crackers, metwurst, and we talked. We don’t get to spend a lot of time together one on one. Plenty at family gatherings but the conversation then is not the same. My sister and I have never had a fight. We have always loved each other’s company even though we are very different from one another. We can talk for hours easily as we did this night, and the next two, over more than one icy cold Riesling or glass of bubbles.
We both exercise regularly so there were brisk beach walks morning and evening – eyes down, always looking for shells, but very few on this beach, unlike the beaches of our childhood on lower Yorke Peninsula.
I have another seaside holiday lined up for next month – four days in a yurt. Will tell you about that one next time.
I was going through some of my mum’s stuff the other day and found a poem that I’d sent her when she lived on Kangaroo Island. I must have written it after I’d holidayed with her there.
COASTAL SONG
Salty kisses
Tangled windswept hair
Souls in need of ocean’s admonition
Rolled up jeans and footprints fading
Water washing shells
and swishing dreams amongst the weed
Rocks unyielding
cruelly punished
glitter as the spray subsides
Living tides awork by habit
uninfluenced by Man’s machines
Lovers humble
learning lessons
wander close
and watch the sky
Embrace horizon’s immobility
weighing magnitude of ocean
with the pinpoint glisten in their eyes
Here’s another one. At the risk of my having put it up somewhere before, I will share it now while I’m in a coastal mood.
MORNING GOLD
Morning gold glazes my solitary beach walk
Sun
waves
weather
gentle
Pebbles small like scattered Smarties in the sand
extend the sculpture of red rocks
in a potpourri of colour
Eyes discerning scan the whorled and cockled mass washed up
in wavering lines of skeletal construction
Salty hands collect the most unique and rare
Benign and modest pelicans
in wondrous choreography
skim just above the water
then in gangling disarray skid in
and float like bobbing boats in winter
Homeward bound I walk
beside the morning’s footprints
Solitude
Elusive light
Now one with sea and earth and wind song
Homeward bound
The lantern night
I see enticing and stirring things on television. The other night I watched a beautifully narrated episode of a series called A World of Calm on SBS. This particular story was about the making of noodles. I love to be taken to other countries and learn about their cultures, food, traditions. To experience these visual arm-chair journeys to villages where people live rustically and simply, amongst age-old buildings and streets, reaches somewhere deep within me, and I want to cry with the knowledge that there is now so much I will not see and feel and hear and taste.
There will be a poem about this to come. In my poems I guess I can create a virtual world, which is a small compensation, just for that moment. And I mustn’t underestimate the adventures that are still within my reach.
I hope you are kicking back and enjoying the season as I am.
Take care. Be kind.
Warmly,
Sue
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