An essay from my other collection Lost & Found about finding your way back to the Dreaming Road, remembering that Enough is not always able to take the place of Everything. Followed by a fresh poem.

 Leaving You Behind

How will I tell you now when I have changed?You no longer see the reflection of your eye in my eyeYou no longer see

I see the arc of the seabirds over the windThe soft apricot of dawn over tideYou ceased to see some time ago 

It has taken me much longer to pause my looking for you, my looking to be seen

You might see the wind has pushed and pulled me aboutThe tide rushed at my feetThe oyster catcher had stern words with meI am a little more unkempt, dressed by skyFreckles from childhood called back by sun’s kiss

I have been changed by the course of the wind, my body shifting, dunes buffeted by the onshore windSome parts of me fall, others grow fuller

I am softening now, that leather of breastplate no longer braced for your storm.

How will I tell you, the mere degrees I have turned towards the sun yet found my steel-caged heart meltingThe bar across my harbour falling back into deep watersThe salt; crisp on the curve of fresh skin preserving me, an imprint of how I wasWhile my warm, softer flesh falls into new shapes.

I lost a shadow in the last days of summer,Moved your mountain a full inch westward on the mapI made myself more daylight in the East; reclaiming hours in a forest that counts a decade as a single dayI moved that mountain and gave your shadow up to silence the shag’s appetiteMaking unapologetic, warm space for my heart

How will I tell you - the landscape bears your shape but my own will overtake itshadow will no longer fall on me in damp winter or the long stretch of summer burn methe shorebirds remain to sing their songs and dawn chatter for meYou now ageless and I ageing on, how will I tell you how I am growing oldI tell the oystercatcher, he squawks againhe and I of the same age

Perhaps the black billed gull will bear it, Carrying word into the horizonwhile I am ankle deep in tuatua beds Or dug into the hillside for the passing showerIn the steps between the chapters of my lifeHarvest, gather, shelter, thaw —I moved that mountain of undone things

I have kept the still waters running in the deep spring of this river —calm above, swift beneath. From that dark crevice now —a clear run out to the inlet 

Salty spray flying while I bait the hookI have learned how to cast into the harbour.I would tell you that and other things too

Later I will find the language An offering that echoes what it is In the river that runs to harbourWhere I am born of the land and the lakesYou left no mark on the land but me to remain in it

How will I tell you that - I am what you made me But I have become more than the sum of partsThe birds know and the moon sees it, Rising and returning on me with regularity.

I swim in the dark water nowBut mostly I wanted to tell youI am finishing what was left undoneCollected the shells from the shorePulled seaweed from the tide I finished planting the garden and cleaning up the little messes that you left behind. 

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