we walked to Sealers Bay. Four of us – all women

bleeding Madonnas on a pilgrimage in the rain. Together, yet alone

each to her own journey

moving like the floods of 2011, ready to take out any obstruction

mud sucking our feet, rainforest leeches suckling our blood like desperate children

the rhythm of my feet set off a reverie about how I lost my mind just a moment ago,

then found it. Blood pumping in my ears, heart pounding like thunder

The sweat running down my neck made me think of you…wondering where, how, who?

a futile fantasy

still the rainforest clings to me, feet echoing on the boardwalk

the sound of running water filled with tannins

emotions of the forest flowing beneath my feet to Sealers Bay

a beach once stained with the blood of whales lies calm and blue, deceptive

a moment of sunshine found me sprawled on the sand, waves of exertion washing over me

The repose was fleeting.

nature interrupted sending a shower and a chill up my spine

A journey is rarely one way and retracing my steps is like retracing a lifetime

…would it have been different, if?..

eventually I turn my mind skyward to a flock of black cockatoos

screeching like banshees at the women trudging one foot in front of the other in a winter forest

nineteen kilometres of contemplation can quiet a busy mind.

It’s the number of surrender, and endurance

the feeling of my toenail lifting in my boot is strangely cathartic. Like a mistress,

how pain focuses thoughts on the detail

I see tiny red Correas, the sex organs of plants, there for the pleasure of others

my buttocks and calves scream as the incline of the hill steepens, spurring me on

pleasure in pain makes you forget yourself,

and the forest

there’s just breathe, and movement, and rhythm