sky wide
paperbark in bloom –
a feather falls

Her funeral today. At this hour those who love her meet to say goodbye. Not only there in Dubbo, with her family, but in quiet places right around the world.
We knew her on the internet and so it’s fitting that together, far apart, we hold her in our hearts here in this Sky-Wide Church.

A bird drops a long feather. It spirals, wafts, settles without a sound. I remember how I wrote a note to her on paperbark, using a sharpened quill, because she loved all of life and birds especially.
She still had it last month.

That’s when we met for the first time. She was as I knew her. On the internet, via poetry, knowing comes from a deeper level.

sky wide
and back again –
the sea

I think about the way the sea reflects the sky, so it goes right to the edge of it and back, and then exchanges itself with it, in a cycle. Sea to sky, as evaporation, back again as rainfall, round and round, like the tides, like life.... some say that there is reincarnation too.
Goodbye my friend. Like the ocean to the shore, I will return here, as my memories turn and turn again.