She saves me

There is something timeless about nature

Unflappably effortlessly implacable

We look into it and feel our hearts slow down a beat

Watch a flock of birds circle

Even in the busy city streets

With honking cars

And busy feet

The clouds drift gently above

A breeze dries the sweat on my cheek

And she saves me

*She saves me from myself, my mind created mess. Yesterday I had a very full head. It was a bit like an overstuffed handbag, all the things I didn’t want to forget. The things that were worrying me, the things I was quietly excited about, plans, poetry, all jumbled up and shoved down hard and heavy.

As I drove up to an intersection, and on auto pilot slowed for an amber light, I realised just how disconnected I was, as I temporarily lost the memory of where exactly I was going.

It was a blank moment. If I was paranoid I would say it was the onset of early dementia but I know it’s not that – it is just a busy person with a fractured mind.

My reason and destination promptly returned to me, the light turned green and I accelerated, which is when I looked up and saw a pelican.

He was an unusual large bird in an unusual place, I pulled over for a minute and just watched him flying. As I did so, everything went still inside. My head emptied and my breath returned to deep breathing. How often do I catch myself looking into a sunset, a sunrise, the ocean, the paddocks, even a beautiful tree or becoming temporarily cheered by wildflowers? Too many to count. It’s my medicine, my healing – I think it’s everyones, we just don’t always realise it.

Last month I was camping at Big Bend overnight in the Carnarvons. I was the only one there, 10km inside the park, pitch dark, sheer cliff walls rising all around and a creek trickling in the background. A lone woman sitting beneath the illumination of a solar light reading.

I looked up at a sound and shone my torch into the encroaching darkness. A big cane toad sat there looking guilty and google eyed in the sudden light, his mouth full of some hapless beetle. We looked at each other for a minute. I turned off the torch and kept reading. The sound of the bush breathing around me, ancient, timeless, and I was just there for the night. I felt very privileged to be amongst it and tried not to shock the other inhabitants any further with my intrusive lights.

I can’t say that angels walk amongst us but heaven certainly is everywhere. And it saves us, from our fleeting, scattered, fragmented shells by pulling our attention to something deeper, quieter, pure and still. Nature doesn’t love us, doesn’t need us, it just is. Which gives me hope that even if we do stuff all of this up – she will continue on, restoring, healing, breathing.