Why campaign for the forests? Most Australians live in cities, the forest is something far away and alien, full of ticks and leeches and discomfort. However much it is part of our national identity and mythology or even how vital the forests are to the survival of species that fill the pages of that mythology, it's not a part of the average Australian’s day to day existence.. This perhaps more than anything is the dilemma as forest lovers we face. How can we help other Australians love the forest as we do? How can we help build an attachment to the forest that inspires other to want to learn about it and protect it?
I suggest it is only by spending time in the forests that people build that attachment and our job as much as anything is to get people there..
The forest is a nymph with whom life longs to be
Whose crystal eyes dance in the streams
In the fragments of reflections of a stark and open sky
Whose voice a chorus greets the sun
And welcomes the moon with a haunting “mo pock, mo pock”
That echoes long and lonely in the crests and towers of the trees
And as she walks amongst those giants
They reach out their vast and powerful arms
Waving huge garlands and showering her parade with leaves
Till like a lizard I a little patterned suit
She sits down to bask at midday
and the cicadas in their thousands talk about her days
They say they say they say they say they say
That she is cruel
And eats the unfirm pseudo mouse that cannot get away
But she just laughs
And glides away between the lily’s and the lacebark
But the cicadas relentless pursue her
They say they say they say they say they say
That when she has sex
As nymphs are want to do
It is as though a fire rages across the ridges of her thighs
And fireballs explodes up her ravines
To leave her smouldering at wet
With the next morning’s dew
But she just smiles
a seedling breaks through the ash bed
But the cicadas relentless pursuit continues
They say they say they say they say they say
That when her lover leaves her a deluge of tears pour down
Drowning everything that crawls
Roaring grief through all the streams
The trees go weak to hear her
Some collapse and die
But she just laughs
Like a sun shower pattering on a break of ferns
And as the sun sets
The cicadas fall quiet
And as I sit here and stir the billy
I say
And have seen her
And breathed her breath
And drank the waters that pond and trickle and cascade through her lap
That she is the essence of beauty
And I gladly make her a present of my heart
(Laurie Axtens)
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Thank you for your beautiful and inspiring words! You have actually brought a tear to my eye.