Fallen — A Remembrance
I hear the whisper of the wind, thirty metres or more above
An almost silent psithurism; passing, overhead
like waves over a sun-bronzed swimmer,
who, ducking-down, under,
deep enough to dampen turbulence,
stills his mind,
slows his heart,
and opens his eyes,
to see, with slow-motion clarity, the silent world below,
before sensing the swell, and, with a faith born of practice
rising again to fill lungs, with cool, moist, life-giving air.
Through this shadowy underworld,
passing cars on soughing tyres glide wet roads,
rising and falling in Dopplered tones
like the rhythmic murmurings of a distant surf.
Still the mind
Slow the heart
Feel into
Listen…
Beyond this world’s intrusions…
Drying leaves dropping
gently clicking their heels
as they spiral down the wooden stairs to the forest floor
pausing at each light-catching platform
as if, at this, their Eleventh Hour,
a dignified entrance still matters.
It does!
And in this autumn,
shafts of light strike gold, and brown, and fading green,
as American and English oak, pines and ferns, alight, in turn,
to frame shadowed glades
where fungi on knee-high stumps
echo flowers on nearby graves.
Three Belgian men place blooms, reverently,
at the headstones of a British aircrew
— Far in time yet close in space —
to the noise-filled sky through which they fell,
toward the quiet forest planted for them to gaze up at.
The winds of change, in gusts or whispers
will dislodge us — one-by-one
disrupting thoughts and plans
and leave us falling, tumbling,
spiralling downwards.
Some too quickly brought to Earth.
others, more slowly, defying gravity —
kissing multiple levels on the way down,
elegant, dignified, to the last moment
leaving the beauty of their passing
as a last, temporary, mark of beauty on the world.
In this,
the Autumn of our time, our Eleventh Hour,
may we too fall, gently, toward a still-living world,
preserving colour and life just a little longer
Buoying others by continually showing our presence
and then alighting, gently, to become offerings on the altars of our destruction
to feed, once again,
the roots of the life source from whence we sprang
before our brief time in the sun.
Epilogue
11am on Remembrance Day in 2018 I attended the memorial service in Yeronga Memorial Park in Brisbane, which has a Cenotaph set in a Memorial Avenue of fig and palms trees to honour the fallen from World War 1. Stephens District community had crocheted 1000 poppies, and placed these in the gardens around the Cenotaph.
“In Flanders’s Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below”
John McCrae, 1915
Two year’s later, after a period of Covid19 lockdowns, at 11am on Remembrance Day 2020 I visited the Heverlee War Cemetery near Leuven. A beautiful and wonderfully-maintained symmetrical quarter-radial pattern of white headstones centres toward a large white cross with a black down-pointing sword. In spring and summer poppies grow in the adjacent fields, and stands of tall trees in the bordering Heverlee Bos (forest) change colours through the seasons, with their peak in Autumn — Fall.
Living in Brisbane most of my life I never expected I would ever be in Flanders’s fields… let alone at a Commonwealth War Cemetery on Remembrance Day, remembering those that had fallen here, from places far away.
The above was my experience on this day…
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And Now What operates from an awareness of acute existential threats for humanity and complex life on Earth. We provide facilitation, learning and developmental journeys for individuals and groups to make sense, heal, transform, reorganize and act as needed to regenerate the web of life.
