Place

Coming back from Tweed
there is always that moment when
the mountains come into view,
the hills and mountains
that ring Murwillumbah.
Some of them have local names
and some of those have become official:
Sphinx Rock, The Devil’s Armchair,
The Pinnacle, Hospital Hill ...
and of course, presiding over
the whole span of the deep blue
Border Ranges: Wollumbin.
Ownership and name
are in dispute. Perhaps
they always were. Mt Warning
it’s often still called, a foreign name.
Some claimants say it looks like
a brush turkey, and it does and I
believe them, yet also,
wider and higher than all the rest,
it is mighty enough to be named,
as others say, for a warrior
and beautiful enough to be,
as only a few insist, a Goddess —
and it calls to me always;
it spells home, and always
the sight of it makes me
instantly happy.


8 Days of Happiness: 3 (2) / Six Sentences

(Late yesterday I came up with this extra piece which really belongs to that day.)