16 November 2019 – London, England

‘missing, wishing, resolve’

my head is all full up with leaves. i’m talking but all i can see are eucalypts in my minds eye, and sandstone walls climbing up above my head. i’m missing the pink gums blossoming at home, and the big gum nuts and oily leaves. i want feet in the dirt, hat on my head, all the happy smiles from last summer’s adventures. it’s too cold here for sun on bare skin. i want stargazing from the comfort of my little green tent. i want to be with my friends, curled up in canvas hideaways. i want the warmth of the sun on my back, and the warmth of friendships that feel as old as the sky. • the land is so dry and on fire and i wish i could send some water from this rainy place, but there’s no package big enough and the postage would take too long. oh that i could curl up and send myself off in a package home even, paid for with green-blue stamps and a blue ‘par avion’ to match. • i want to feel close to something. and i’m stuck in this place, feeling so far away. perhaps i will walk down to the river at sunset today and watch the cormorants fish and the children marvel. i trudge along in my boots from home, grounding my dizzy dispersed head, unwinding the knots that tell me that life isn’t the same here, that it’s too hard. those knots are lying. it’s worth being here, even if my closenesses don’t feel as old as the sky and the dust underfoot. every footfall to and from the river beats “i am enough”.