Blue Saviour

Frozen, almost asleep

My body weighs heavy

Gravity pushes me down, squeezes me

Why don't you just stay?

Says my cloudy blue brain

It would be easy, but I am afraid

That I cannot, while fear builds up in my throat

of what the road holds, won't it swallow me up?

The lump in my throat grows bigger

Fear resides in me

I shake, I tremble

I have no other choice, I must leave

This place no longer holds me tight

No longer nurturing

It suffocates me.

Tyres spin on lop-sided roads

I watch the country change

From frosty snowflakes, to flat brown lands

Then red dirt engulfs me.

The country grows wider and more barren

Then I remember,

It was this big all along.

Long stretches of desert

Shades of red so many, more than the sky

Shrubs, trees, mountains, life

So diverse it dwarfs me.

Knowing that if I wandered on,

I would be nothing but my spirit

On the wind, in the sand, in the bird calls.

A part of me wanted this,

To just disappear,

Fade away into nothingness.

But then, sunrays shine out my heart,

as I connect with people

On journeys something like mine,

Yet they are just as lost too.

Home tugs at my heart strings,

Trying to pull me back

When a kindred spirit

Decides to go to another realm.

For the weight of this grief I cannot bear

Blue darkness drips down my arteries

Come, come back, it says

But it was not to be.

I take solace on my own,

Surrounded by trees,

the only way I know how.

I find a private spot

Hoping to be undisturbed

Three young women appear,

Soft and gently, they approach me

"Can we sit with you"? They ask,

"Yes", I say, while welling up with tears

I blurt out my woes, and they reply

"God has brought us to you in this moment.

Do you believe in God?"

Our God may not be the same, I think

My God is the trees, the air, the sun and the waves

"Yes", I reply, feeling that the intention is the same

"Can we pray for you?" they ask,

I agree, in disbelief of the timing

And so we sat and they prayed, for both me and my friend

Brought together by total strangers

The strength that I needed.

Then, I remembered, willy wag tails swirl all around me

For days on end

This country gives me signals

I only had to listen.

Manta rays visited me in my dreams

Swirling all around me

A message that we can get through this

But we must connect with country.

I go deeper into the red,

Letting it engulf me

My veins in the dust,

Starry skies on my skin

River systems rush over me

Tingling, all consuming

Skies so big you could never imagine.

Boab trees arching over

Realising

All our blood is red

Our veins are the river bends

The patterns in the leaves,

And the sparse trees

I will trace your spirit forever

on the horizon.

My heart is beating stronger now,

My once dead centre replenished

I needed the landscapes to rush through me

But then, what was next?

The furious sea crashes down on the red

I dive deeper, the sea crushes me

But this time, the crushing is gentle

This time, it's a hug from the sea

This squeeze is nurturing

The feeling is mutual

The peace under the surface is unbeatable

Nowhere else so quiet, nowhere else so free

I nudge deeper and deeper

Chasing this feeling

Manta rays wrap their wings around me

But wait, wasn't this just a dream?

Here they are, right beside me

I hear your message

We are all connected

But it's time to say goodbye

Let us both be free.

I meet more kindred spirits,

Lovers of the ocean,

The more I meet the more I think

This is the life I want to live

Manta rays dance right past me

And I think of him again

The ocean, my saviour

Pulling me deeper

The deeper I go I lighter I feel

My body is healing, my brain is expanding

Testing my limits is addictive

Deserts change to rolling green hills

Rain and mountains

Just when I think the adventure is over

The north calls me again

Magpie sing-song and ancestral twine

Whale calls in ancient language

How could I not know all this time

That my refuge is in the ocean

How could I not have known

This is what I needed to let go.

It's when you look into the eyes of a shark

You see vulnerability, curiosity

Frozen, floating, together

You see how our heads have us believe

That other things are more important

Like capitalism, greed, and fitting in

What's really important is for us to breath

Take our power back

So we must take refuge in the ocean

Dive deep, and allow ourselves

to be frozen, vulnerable

For in the water I am free

My inner child released

For while we come from stardust

We also come from the deep seas

We must protect it at all costs

No matter how blue we might get.