Return to the Tide

I walk the new pier where water laps in time,
each pulse against the pylons
a rhythm that finds my heartbeat
and walks beside it.
The boards beneath my feet remember
every step I’ve taken toward leaving,
and every step that led me back.

The tide shifts,
teaching me softness,
how to bend without breaking,
how to rise again with salt in my lungs
and light in my eyes.

Tracing the coast like tracing the
silhouette of an old friend,
the old pier pylons stand as
remnants of memories long gone,
weathered and split, now keepers
of ships and wrecks.
Far beyond the mountains rise,
Bunjil watches remembering too,
his shadow reaching across the tide.

I have learned this much:
you can root yourself
without refusing the current.
You can begin again
in the same place you began before
and see it for the first time.

Each return is a kind of knowing,
each wave a whispered yes.
The path winds back on itself,
a fluid labyrinth,
quiet and certain,
until I understand;
I was never lost,
only circling home.

***

In October I was able to go home to Geelong for four wonderful days. I love being able to go home and recharge, breathe in the air at low tide and feel the cool change of an afternoon.

We did a day-trip of driving the Bellarine Peninsula – all the places I once worked as a young Home Care Assistant, discovering new look outs and little hideaways that are obvious to all those who live in the area, but new to someone who hasn’t been in twenty years.

This is inspired by the new pier along Steampacket Gardens and old pier at the Clifton Springs boat ramp. We read information at The Dell Lookout about how Corio Bay is shallow, so when white man settled in the region they had to design the pier to go out a fair way so the boats wouldn’t be stuck with the changing tides.

And then, in the distance, Bunjil appears on the horizon, his wings suggesting mid-flight, reminding me of home.