On the beach, at dawn:
Four small stones clearly
Hugging each other.
How many kinds of love
Might there be in the world,
And how many formations might they make
And who am I ever
To imagine I could know
Such a marvelous business?
When the sun broke
It poured willingly its light
Over the stones
That did not move, not at all,
Just as, to its always generous term,
It shed its light on me,
My own body that loves,
Equally, to hug another body.
Mary Oliver
Beloved daughter mine
Like wildfire your first breath ignited my mama ness
Like wildflowers you blossom without shy boundaries or pruning
Like sunrise you bravely wake to each new day
Like joy unbound I cherish you and pray you keep growing strong and kind
Beloved daughter mine
Sweet scent fill this home
I tidy sweep and love up
While you watch in peace
Dear Mama dear Mother dear Mum
My Mother my first companion
Mother my dearest friend
Mother feet ever walking
Steady footsteps heartbeat of your journey
Mother of my heart
Mother of my soul
You have given me love and life to make me whole
Mother hands I see always strong and tender
Making strumming playing planting carrying loving curing weaving healing winding spinning soothing calling calming
Mama makes life and soft wool to shawl it in
Mama is there and here and listening and singing
Mother is mama mamala mum music
Patient boulder of kindness
Trustful quiet tide
Love as simple as the sky
Tolerant as the stones on the shore
Strong and brave as the storm winds
Gentle as the birds flight
Musical soundtrack of my childhood
Quirky and generous uniquely you
Mother of my heart mother of my soul
You have given me love and life to make me whole
My world is a beautiful place with you in it x
The first day of both children at school spanning before me And I don’t have to drive the 50km round trip, and I fulfilled my promise I would swim in the river and then be home all day and read in bed in the morning and try to nap and refill after staying awake way too often since we returned from Tasmania, unable to unwind with all the transition and change and shifting happening in and around me at this time. Life is looking so different and I’m facing such new possibilities and being pushed towards things I never thought I wanted and here I am home alone for hours. 3.5 more self directed hours. I promised myself a day of following my whims and going gently towards what I wished to while also planning to taking care of a couple of household needs and making some dinner too so I could Just hang out with the children when they return and you know do some washing and mow some grass and vaccumn and maybe have a good long talk with my mama And talk about parenting the adolescent And wonder what the new phase brings and what shall I do now, just like so many parents around the country this week who choose school for their kids and have sent off their littlest one, hopefully I will cherish a few moments in between productivity and work to just be me and feel so grateful for this day,
and then without planning it, I had a surprising piece of fun when I followed a lesson from great storytelling teacher Justus Neumann at the Tasmanian circus festival and allowed the words to bubble out spontaneously and fast and follow them without a thought and write them down, instead of listening to them babble on while I wanted to nap and there, in it, was the sweetest reminder of how fun it is for me to write and play with words and see what untamed combinations of verbs want to play with me without fear and inhibition, And the effervescent chuckles that land on my tongue when I’m really having some of the quiet wordy solo type of fun and how balanced I feel and contented afterwards.
So here is my fun, lightly edited as computers come up with the most profoundly amusing types of word suggests when you type so fast ones keypad can no longer spell, spell checked and not for judgement, just for fun and to share a bit of my fun because not everyone’s fun looks the same but maybe my fun will connect to your fun or maybe your fun will respond to my fun or maybe not but you’ll think about fun and what you’ve done just for fun just for You todayand maybe I will hold this reminder of fun as what brings me a slice of happiness pie. Fun!
I began with a phrase I’d created spontaneously in the workshop with Justus. By the way Tassi Circus Festival was really fun! More another day!
The child blew away, the child blew away that day
And left Behind was a husk of crisp leaves and stick and stones and dry earth bones and the query of where in the sky do you go when you die as who you used to know
When the wind blows and blows and you want to go go go go go
up there it was so blue
Blue blue Blue Azure cerulean heraldic blue
Like an eye like the depth of a lovers eye where you can melt and join and drift and rise lightly like A balloon set free from a small fist without a cry
The child blew away and I was the child too and I lifted up into the sky and was immaculately free
To be me and to see with such vast all seeing eyes what had been revealed just for my sight
That inside, the child had blown away and without her I was a dry crispy husk of leaves and dry parched earthen bones and that
With only stones I was no fun and that my joy to live and caress life with my gift of creativity and sight had left me high and dry
Like a ship with no sails and only seagulls on the gunwales and seagulls are not patient by nature and squawk like a nagging sagging fish wife and that was what a slice had become of my precious life when. I let my child blow away, always it was a contrast of being freed and being me and being dreamy and high but I was left with only the fishwife who knew not what it was to be light and blow with life and find the heart in all matters and people fun and to be poked and poke fun and revel in the disturbances of living and think of more than . Which fish needs to be scaled or which mountain needs to be nailed or which duty needs to be mailed
Because the joy and the flight was up up up in the blue blue blue and the child was where the happiness flew and the child needed the big child that was Me to hold her hand and . Guide her across the land of living and being me but she so needed it also to be one of the many faces to see to have fun you see you see to have fun like a child unaware like a child without a care like a child who is truly there present truly there in the moment and not thinking if she’ll be liked or lied to but just there in the moment to be and have fun freely and be safely held and sheltered and trust the wind
And so when we blew away it wasn’t whinging id left my shoes at home, it was with the beautiful trust that I as mother was there holding the string that joined my soul to the earth and in my great knowing pocket was everything i ever needed to fly.
Roselinde
PS what are you doing for fun?
Spookiest to the punctuation prefects. (Read; Apologies, see isn’t it fun what the computer auto suggests…)
Advent unfolding
Slowly simply
Plant colours dried and dyed
Gold and silver, mint and rust
Dusty green and watered silk
Scented with eaucalypt
Light a candle under the wreath
Light a candle in my dark night
Pray for grace
Play for space
Gently unfurl
What is genuine in this moment
Admire and melt into summer colours and
Breath of wind and starlight kisses
Unadorned and humble
Feet on the ground
Candlelight in the window
Calls me into myself
Xx
Blessings
Roselinde
The wild poetree
whispers of gypsy winds and
lilting lullabies
Embers of emotions
Smelting words into
Liquid form with the nights midnight ink
Worlds arise in misty form
Spun from dreams and breath
Wonderous creation
Dewlit strands of silk
Thread these visions into cloth
Of determined gold
Delicately held
Tapestries of memories
Unfurl me gently
The spool of life spun
I return to poetree
My nest high above
Roselinde
I wrote these words some time ago as I reflected on the question ” for what purpose do I blog”. I was wanting to rekindle this place of expression and found myself connecting this story. 
Once upon a time a windswept and painterly girl fell into a great hole of solitary sadness and weeping. Though many tried loyally to throw her a rope her suddenly clumsy hands could not hold the fibre for long enough to climb. It seemed slippery as a silken strand of silver lining. She tried to weave herself a shawl to fly on, a basket to sail away in, a raft of stitches and baked up a magical cake. But alas, she was doomed to stay in the midnight shadow for many days and many nights with broken body and bound heart.
Some nights the stars seemed closer and she could almost see the moon. Some days the sun did seem to rise just for her once more. Those days she captured what she could of life’s gifts and in golden ink scribed them into her magical tome with ink illustrations, and these pages and pictures became a scaffold of good memories to rise her up. A sturdy reminder that her life had beauty and light and gifts and company, a place to reach out shyly to the world with her gifts of word, colour and pictures.
The hole she was in, seemed to floor itself up under her and rose her until she could once more see the ground beneath her souls. One plank at a time a new frame is made. Sometimes she sits on the edge of the well of dark sorrow and sometimes she floats amongst it’s thick insidious air, and when she finally returns she will gasp for air and lay upon the blossom strewn grass giving thanks that these days pass.
Roselinde
For the Traveller
Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:
How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.
When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.
~ John O’Donohue ~
I am drawn out with the soft grey dawn, awakening bird songs lure me into the day. The wind softly guides me up the ridge line walk. I am cocooned in layers of wool like paperbark and I soon enter a walking meditation, every rhythmic step the goal of my experience.
Each footfall quiet and attentive.
my awareness extends, to touch bird melodies and leaf whispers, though I think I am quiet, a walkaby at 50 metres scampers away through the rasping grass.
my soft steps continue the meandering morning path. Pale light and muted colours.
There are fewer melodies up here now. I am dreamily passing blood woods and casuarinas, the old ones, bladed grasses and fallen limbs.
I’m leaving the rumble and play of the creek noises and entering a quieter hillock. I’m present to the sensations of my walking body, swaying limbs as branches and sound chasing.
Until I find myself thinking about journalling my experiences and story.
A chuckle for myself.
This morn I’ve risen chirpy like a wee yellow breasted wren. Nothing will dim my song. My quiet escape fills me with glee.
The landspace subtly shifts and now I have a view over the ridge to the cascading forest across the valley. Each bunch of grey/orange/blue/greenery swaying its own direction. Spun and waltzed by this buffeting wind. Ah this wind! it lifts me high into its embrace,
my face turns and smiles into it like a happy farm dog on the tray of a ute.
Joyous in the face of windy thrills.
my senses open once more and slowly i step along. Observing all the sheoak saplings culled by the last burn off.
I note some of the soft leaved branches will help our fire start this drizzly day. I step over the exposed roots of a large blood wood giving honour as one of the sentinels of the woods. There aren’t many left up here.
Ahh my heart sours, a treasure of fairy pink by my foot print. A solitary pink fairy orchid offers me rain drops from her petals. I delicately catch them and pray with this tiny gift of bush magic. We commune until I am beckoned on, where a forming balga spear has immature flower heads adorning the top foot or so. It is smooth and strong and a wondrous display of natures contrasts. The slender pointy leaves forming a protective cushion below.
I read recently, look under the green growth on wet days, there one can find a cache of dry tinder. I note this also for my fire efforts.
It’s only on my return I notice the balgas grow on the higher ground and I’ve unwittingly left their domain. I’m too hungry to turn back.
I feel drawn on until I can view the little mountain adorned by turtle head rock. Its clear I’m not to wander there this day. The wind tugs and swirls around me. I am expansive and generous in my exchange.
Up here I notice the diverse bird song again, the open woodland carpeted with grasses and granite beds. The balgas grow more prolifically.
I wish I could translate their tunes and calls, but I am not yet a devoted bird nerd.
The day has brightened and my mood with it. This spontaneous solitude nourishing and adding to my collection of stories. I run.
My body fairly hovers downhill pausing only for tinder collecting and slurping rain drops from sheoak fronds as i pass their domain. I run my mouth along a bundle of new growth and catch a small mouthful of plant gathered sky juice.
I return with my happy heart anticipating the smokey perfume and family shawl I shall wear this day.
RosaLindenTree 
