Posted by Picasa Photo credit: June Perkins, From Archives in the Land series.

Tracing the past in the lines of a book doesn't always work
Sometimes we have to go back to the bark and the rings
and the stories in the land and the stories in the memory
of the aunties and the elders sitting under the trees

They sit there tracing out those memories for the children
in the afternoon storytellings with their reconciliation days
winding around the tree, breathing up through its core.

Tags