During NAIDOC week, Good Samaritan Sister Marie Casamento SGS reflected on the spirits of the first peoples imbibing the land in Wivenhoe where she lives.

BY Marie Casamento SGS

Mist muffled silence,
wraps, winds itself
inside and outside
the very fibre of our being.

Today this day
opens out to
meet each moment,
each person as one.

Today despite 
the dankness
of the mist enveloping us,
we feel warm, content embraced at one with all.

Yesterday was different.
we woke to the tympanic throb,
of raindrops, one by one letting go
of their grip on the iron fence.

Yesterday the steady saturating rain
soaked the thirsty soil with life,
bestowed a promise of life returning
as it glistened on tightly emerging narcissuses.

Tomorrow the finches
will fly, flit and flutter,
cracking small seeds
among the thin twigs of native trees.

Tomorrow we will mindfully sit,
once again in silence
on the warming earth,
sit and watch, listen and imbibe deeply.

They are here,
we am sure of it.
They are here we intuit it.
They rustle the hairs on our soul’s senses.

We bow!
We acknowledge their presence,
Spirits of the first people
who yesterday, today and tomorrow still sit on this their land.

The day after tomorrow will come again
and many days after that will fall dusked and dawned anew.
Finches will flutter in falling rain.
Mist will wrap us round forever changed.

We will forever be different.
The backs of our souls will bristle,
as we forever hold that moment, the moment
we were wrapped in the spirit of our first peoples.