Windgrove

Life on the Edge

Paradise? Where exactly?

Looking down upon the beach, one could not help but imagine all was peaceful in the world. Gentle waves pushing happy kids towards the shore. Pleasant temperature; soft off-shore breeze. All was well this Sunday morn, a seeming paradise.

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Yet in this particular day’s invisible morning air, the near inaudible rhythmic lapping of waves were as a metronome to my ears hastening to tell my quiet meditative state something different.

Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 60

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Pull the telephoto camera lens back to where I am sitting on the Wombat bench. Now, the particulars of a seemingly pleasant beach day are placed in context with the bigger picture and the focus changes.

Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. The land is parched. The sky barren of cloud. I worry. The early morning shadows behind me will give way to another very hot and dry day.

The seasons are changing for the worse. The arrow of time Shakespeare refers to has been manipulated by humankind to speed us towards a chaotic life threatening curse.

I shut the gate and walk away pissed off by the lack of imagination of our politicians, business lobby groups and climate skeptics.

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And seek refuge in the much smaller gated vegetable garden where I can bring the focus back down to something more manageable; something more hopeful. For here is the literally meaning of “paradise”: a walled garden.

Inside, I find hope while looking up close to greening tomatoes. In the glint of the blaring sun, the stems sparkle with what seems like fine gold dust. Their worth and preciousness symbolized by an element created in the death explosion of a star.

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It is such an affirmation of life bursting towards fulfillment that my parched soul can’t help but be aroused by the plump eroticism held in the palm of my hand.

Can the reader hear the word “guard” in garden? As in guarding the den? As a mother wolf guards the den where the young ones suckle? As life trickles on, drip by drip, mother’s nipple to waiting mouth?

Where I kneel down and kiss the greening fruit that will soon be in my own mouth: ripe, ready and willing.

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