Book of Eucalypt

Bare feet press into the earth –
the first language I ever spoke.
The land hums beneath my skin,
and the pulse of the world rises within,
slow and certain,
like breath after a long silence.

The sun finds me –   
its warmth folding over my shoulders,
mending the torn edges of days
I thought I had lost to the noise –
the noise of life, of endless tasks and obligations,
of choosing, again and again,
to set myself aside for a while.

I kneel beside the stream.
My moving reflection showing
what could have been,
a living memory.
I cup my hands,
and bless my crown –
mud-streaked, alive, forgiven.

There – between the shimmer and the shadow –
the spirit of the land steps forward.
Human in form,
green in soul with antlers that
reach for the sky as his
eyes glisten, deep as the roots below us.
He smiles with the quiet knowing
that I have come home.

I rise –
each breath a prayer,
each heartbeat a drum
calling the world back into me.
The quiet current carries the past away,
and the earth answers beneath my feet:
you were never separate.