Georgie’s frangipani tree is budding.
Baby leaves peek from the tips of each branch,
tiny halos signalling the end of the Spring drought.
This day is mist.
A soft blanket of grey with the rain playing across the tin roof;
A blessing of cloudfall that has washed ashore on the northerlies.
I sit like a mountain and breathe,
watching the ragged prayer flags whisper their
sutras around the house,
hearing the cottage garden stretch and smile
turning itself from a patch of brown sticks into
colour again.
The mountain sighs.

When winds blow across
the top of the ocean they
push waves away,
allowing the cold, dark, deep water
to rise to the surface
in an overturning process called upwelling.
And so it has been in my life this year.
Layers of warmth upended by wind and
replaced for a time by fertile shadows
that broke me open to tenderness.

I am revising history now
from the perspective of the beloved Alley ospreys
that wheel above Currumbin Rock,
the place we call our temple.
As age and time weather away the layers
a miracle of understanding and compassion arise:
We all did the best we could with what we had back then.
Families fractured across generations across time and space but
somehow most of us lived on and found other paths and ways.
The wind whispers forgiveness and I inhale
folding it into every cell and atom of this body.
Exhaling, the ocean rolls and
we paddle our surfboards out across crystal sky on a mid-October morning
that feels like summer holidays because
the water is so warm and light plays through the lineup.

Georgie’s frangipani tree rises.
Six years she stands in the soil of love and longing
blossoming every November to remind us that beauty endures.
The mountain rests.