The City

Four days spent in the city and these are the things my children noticed;

The sound of the crow.

The colour of the river.

The scent of the jacaranda tree.

The sadness in the eyes of the homeless man.

The deceit in the voice of the taxi driver.

The abundance of choice which actually made them distressed.

The pounding of their hearts that inevitably cried

“Take me home!”

The truth is… I love cities. I love being inside their brightly-lit chaos.

The theatre production of rush. However, I need to live near the ocean now. In fact, I have come to a point in my life where I couldn’t not live on this mountain near the sea. My body predictably craves lying a’top a patch of water hyssop,

and showering outside under the stars.

I could spend hours watching the bees pollinate the xanthorrhoeas.

It just hits different on the days that I am reeling with anxiety.

As a family, we love travelling and I want my children to dip their toes in different landscapes. I want them to hear new sounds. Taste new flavours. I want them to fall into sonder with open hearts. But I also want them to yearn for the canopy of trees underneath their bedroom window. I want them to miss the sound of the black cockatoo as it soars overhead at dinner-time. I hope they always remember the brightest stars in the darkest paddocks.

Because stars don’t lie.

Birds will always call out to one another.

Mountains cannot pretend.

The ocean speaks the truth.

And a taxi driver can only ever take you from one place to another,

but it’s the honesty of the soil that’s needed to grew the roots.