Mother Marri

Under a giant Marri in Nanga Forest, at a healing festival words came with the rising of the moon. And around a fire the witches and healers whispered. Some of us were singers and as we followed the sparks we followed and tracked their life spans and ours beneath the stars... and that rusting gum, that holy one, that Mother Marri I heard her singing.


Mother Marri. 02:10:98

The rusting gum, the Holy One
Mother Marri spoke to me
I heard her whispering her words of wisdom, words in her songs to those who might listen:
Let us be !

Here within, she said, here the possum climbs the cloud
and beyond my bough, between me falls the Sun
then wisps of colour merge together
dance on forever, they spiral in splendour
toward the horizon bound.

For see the untethered Moon is rising,
here at the horizon watch the sun bewitched declining
soon her golden shades will wander,
and farewelled in darkness, and with frogs come the chorus
hear them singing: Let us be!

Now hear the fire, she said, it attracts the child and
a melodious mood is set, for
a chord is struck, and the wand is cast
for the spells of no regret.
And all that is living can hear it
and there are even some who can see it
see the Earth, and the Moon, twisting at one in their tune
with the wind swept songs of leaf, singing:
Let us be !

Imagine the Courage

Imagine 13:01:99

Desired by all…Imagine the courage…

Imagine the courage to love the land
to cease the game
to change the plan
to cease the ruin
to seek the buck
to sell our soul for a logging truck

Imagine the courage to stop and think
to cease the madness
with a blink
to cease this sadness
for all who think
Australia’s old forests are her most sacred link

Imagine the courage of yet another day
when words are spoken
in a different way
Juxtaposed against those
of profit or pay
and their money making companies who have all the say.

Imagine the courage to truly love the land
And I don’t mean a wheat farm,
a tree farm
or the dryness of sand.
I mean the wildness of wilderness
and her ancient landscapes that stand

Unscathed by the white hand…

Imagine the courage…

Frogs of Jane Forest

Frogs of Jane Forest

I am a frog who wades through the mess you mask and make
and all the risks you choose to take
I am the embryo through which you prod, dissect and bleed.
I am the measure of your illogical non-ecological capitalist creed...
and I am dying...
and you who choose to remain unaware choose not to care
your profits shall be your snare for as you sleep you’re suffocating me
silent to the frog beyond your window and the disease that stops my breath
we suffocate together you and I and we will one day wander homeless
into the sky

by tim mccabe

The Sky is a Window and the Ocean a Mirror

Hovea Falls: Window on the Track

The Sky is a Window and the Ocean a Mirror 13th October 2008

In conversations with myself I imagine the sky is a window, and that the sun is a giant lamp pulled along an invisible thread.
The moon too is a lamp held by an unknown being, although, I suspect the moon is the earth's bathroom light fixed to its ceiling we call the sky; or a bedtime light that she uses to watch the movements of life upon her skin.
"And the ocean, what of that vast quantity of water?"
I hear my thoughts trying to trick me, "What of the ocean??"
I think the sea is a mirror, a giant mirror that the earth shines beyond, to its brothers and sisters in its solar system and outwards, to its cousins and extended family of the Milky Way.
"And what of the milky way, what purpose does it serve?" says my mind out to trick me...sure, is not the milky way and its billion plus suns of light and life reflecting skin an amalgamation of many and an experimental infinity of one?
A spiraling infinity of possibility, that the eyes of someone or some thing distant, might wonder, just like ourselves, if life as we know it, might also be watching, wondering...
"Yeah?" but my mind wants to question...
But what comes my answer...
"What of birds?"
"What do they see in the rivers and lakes below them?"
"What Topsy turvy world do they engage in a ceiling above and sky below them, reflections of the sky and clouds that tumble and rise - what do they see to think?"
Well, I don't know, I am not a bird, but if I were, I'd imagine a mindfulness of wind in my feathers, of wings outstretched of soaring and gliding and the water below, I think, must still be a mirror, tracking movement and possibility.
A mirror awakening to the celebration of life, of life that moved from its sea to its shorelines, and then to the air, and from trees onto the earth and into the sky.
Sky Gods we have become, we who have learned to fly, in earth time in the blink of an eye, who will one day navigate the stars.
I still say the oceans are a mirror and the moon and sun are but lights and lamps and beacons to worlds beyond, signalling their signals, blinking in a sea of possibility to ships in the night...

White tailed Black

Night Owl

Night Owl 6th October 2008
The owl species among the southwest forests are hooters, screamers and distant echoes.
Camping solitary in the forests near Nannup, there were times when their echoes resonated through my cabin.
Sleeping in my Kombi camper my dwelling resembled something of a meditation hut, an ashram parked in the forest.
In this place I dreamt, slept, prepared my meals, wrote my poetry, mused upon words, and listened.
Most of all I listened.
The sound of the owl was powerful, piercing and personal.
To me there was a wild wisdom in it, a rhythm pleasing.
During the night I kept warm beneath my doonar surrounded by bookshelves with pages on deep-ecology, Celtic poets, nature mystics...Joanna Macy's 'Earth as lover earth as self...' looked down at me while a small glass lamp cast shadows on the coloured sarongs that hung on the windows.
Beneath the cooker a cupboard of magazines of earth first journals, and blockader poetry sat amid packets of incense and turquoise beads...
The cabin of my van was a haberdashery of memories, coloured feathers stood splayed on my dash board and atop my rear view mirror.
When I awoke, when slipping from the cocoon that kept me from the frost, it was the wild calling of the short-billed Carnabies or long bill Bauldins and the occasional passing through by the Naso or the rasping of the red-tailed black cockatoo that finally drew me from my van.
Periodically the fairy wren was seen to be hopping, present - momentarily, then disappearing.
Some wand had been cast and their magic secreted to the spot where they had hopped and passed.
It was in mid September when I noticed them, some nomadic types had wandered into view.
They lived in an old bedford van, a man with dreadlocks as thick as seaweed balls interlaid and embellished with amber and emerald beads.
And she, the mother with a single naked child on her hip was likewise dreadlocked and beaded. She had a ring through her lip and one through her nose, and wore a pair of fading burgundy to brown Thai boat pants and barefooted, her toes revealed jewelry similar to what she wore through her nose...
I heard someone once refer to such people as crusty hippies but such descriptions failed to go beyond appearance.
Sure, they looked like blockaders, people that had emerged from a Karri or
Jarrah forest protest, I had seen similar people in such places.
Maybe it was the way they attended their fire, attentively, respectfully almost ritually, with a kind of practiced care and attention to smoke drift and a place to cook or boil.
Insights into their use of fire gave me insights into their lives and experiences I imagined and suspected them of having.
I watched from afar.
I had my own camp to rest in, my own books to visit and fire to attend.
I wanted to visit them, and planned to the next morning.
That night I could see the firelight between the branches.
Their movements cast long shadows on the trees and then came the hooters, the mopoke conversations and screaming possum.
These marauders to my outside eskies upon finding them locked would climb my van and scratch at the canvas of my roof.
Their eyes upon finding my fly screen windows peered in, large attentive glassy eyes momentarily held my stare...
The next morning, like every other morning I awaited till I could hear the red tails and white tails...one rasping in flight and the other weeping, mourn filled and searching.
It is said they fly in search of their Noongar family. Ngoolyaar-ngoolyaar they are crying, calling their brother and sister-in-laws - "Where are you, where have you gone??"
And so, once again I emerged from my van, squeezed my hand alongside the cooker and pulled the latch that opened the sliding door...
I could see smoke from my neighbors fire, and I imagined they were waking like myself, wiping sleep from their eyes and cooking porridge, perhaps...
And I readied myself to greet them, thinking what gift, what gift might I bring them...??
And spying the dashboard of my Kombi I remembered my collection of white tailed black cockatoo tail feathers and thought, surely this would make an impression and took the finest one I had. I took the one with the finest detail and unassailed with the sharpest edge.
I walked towards their van but everything was silent.
I walked towards their van and getting close I noticed the side door was slid open and there on the dashboard was a dozen or more white-tailed black cockatoo feathers, as well as several giant cone shells, amber beads and a many mirrored burgundy embroidered cowrie edged cloth...
My single feather no longer seemed a prize worthy of a gift... but then I remembered several red-tailed black cockatoo feathers I had and then thought to retrace my steps and to visit them with one of these.
Then I heard them in the distance, and so decided I'd follow their voices and...say something, anything that one says when alone in the forest.
Coming close I stood camouflaged behind a giant snotty gobble and spied him swimming with his daughter in the river pool beyond.
The mother, the one I had seen in burgundy boat pants sat mud smeared on a log half submerged at the edge of the pool.
Her naked form wobbled in the mirrored reflections at her feet.
On her lower back connecting to the creeseline of her buttocks sat a Celtic sun. Its patterning sat half covered by her golden-brown dreadlocks and inlaid amber beads. Now was not the time to engage them in conversation, surely, I thought, surely we all deserved moments such as these unassailed by the voices and distractions of a stranger...
And so I re-acquainted myself with the foliage that surrounded me. And trod carefully, careful to avoid the solitary raptor of the ground the stinging steel fanged pincers of the sergeant ant.
And finding my way back to my car I set about cleaning my camp, thinking they might have noticed my smoke and might likewise call by...
And after washing my porridge bowl and brewing some chai over my gas cooker I lay back with my books and scents and... I awoke.
I had drifted off to sleep.
It was by then near lunch time when I once again set out for the camp of the strangers holding the red feather carefully in my hand, making sure it did not brush against anything as I walked...
What would I say to them...what would they say to me??
These strangers, what stories might they tell me, perhaps we might find we were not strangers at all, but friends, or mutually connected by experiences and places...
I walked to where their van had been.
Their fire was no more.
The ground around their camp had been swept of their tracks, only ash still warm told me they had been there.
They had come and gone, and I stood there, forlorn that I had missed them.
And they too had missed me.
And so I returned despondent to my van, irritated for what might have been.
That night, I lit the fire as I had done every other night, steamed my vegetables and brewed my tea but couldn't forget the family I had seen the day before and the stories that we hadn't shared and connections we had never made.
Then once again the night owl returned and the hoot-hoot mopoke sound of echo and neighbour carried me into sleep.
I awoke in the morning to the sound of the red-tailed black cockatoo, the rasping kaarak sound of its voice and then soon followed by the white-tails seeking their kin in every hollow.
After the voices of the black men and their women folk had moved on, I once again emerged from my van and saw it.
There hanging tied to a branch was a cockatoo feather.
Like the one I had meant to deliver to the strangers it was a tale feather from the red-tailed black cockatoo.
Its edges were sharp and colour vivid and distinct.
It was tied above the ground to a branch near my camp with a piece of leather thread.
Tied into the thread was an amber bead and one white cowrie.
That cockatoo feather still sits between one of my books today.
This singular tale feather had stories aplenty, and signified another's attention and intention in making contact.
And so, that next night, once again alone with my fire I held conversations with the invisible bearers of that gift whom I felt sat with me by my fire.
And together we listened to the night owl and their close and distant conversations.