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When we arrived
I learnt how hard it was to measure the weight of walls and stranger stones.
How settling was mapped with the latitudes and contours of everyone, but us.
How foreign words were like shells, hinged so tight they could only whisper sea.
How we chandled quiet ghost ships harbouring spaces, preparing, preparing.
How we were beached by the ebb and flow of otherness, trying to simply float.

When we stayed
I learnt that we have the hidden force of generations of solitary travellers
That the arm bones of prehistoric women were stronger than modern rowers.
That the tides of learning have us navigating by touch, light so often lost.
That leaving is a quest for becoming, frontiers are made to be crossed.
That all you think you leave behind is never there, time sifts people, places.

When we reminisced
I learnt how landscapes write our language, how easy it is to translate eyes.
How a prodigal child is forever returning, searching for old perfect postcards.
How language is a birthing/berthing, that words are place, havens, wombs.
How sudden sloping light can hologram a field with our abandoned South.
How a “where’re you from luv“ has me picking figs and olives on the moon.