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Darkness falls over the land.
Speech is lost.
Deaf ears hear voices of the lost.
We speak with thick tongues and our voices are those of the message.
To receive, to deny, we care not, only that you hear us, we who are lost. As I listened, the song became instrumental, the message differing from those who chant, who rose in infamy, to become the bastion of times past.
Suddenly we see, though the black iris of our eye says otherwise, in a world so infinitely dark. The sun skips across yonder continent, as we slumber. Those of us awake seek to remember.
In this fall, this autumn, our gaze shifts to the leaves, falling softly into our hearts, and in preparation for the winter, we sew and thicken our blood. The vocal stream of thought now becomes silence, as if in anticipation of the cold it has become frightened.
Silent now they dream of the past. While we, still yet to sleep, are the accompaniment of the nights music. The possum, the bat, and perhaps an owl too, remind us of the earth. Drawn from our reverie, we wait until the silence speaks again.
When it speaks it does so with the voice of a loved one, that of the earth, your mother, your keeper, your eternal guardian. She is fell, she if fey, she cares, she destroys, we are her children. She whispers, she shouts, she loves, she punishes, and has been given into our keeping. She is a child, she is a woman, she is an old man.
The still of the night broken only by that which some call noise,
is her praise.
For long have we tended our fields, too long for some, weary of the wheel of life. When we ponder the peace of the earth, it is only after a day of hard toil. We plant our seeds in the mother, and children are born. We eat the fruit of the land, and live accordingly.
To whom do we owe our lives?
To what do we listen when all else is quiet. Outside, the wind whispers.
I wait for the day when you become me. Knowing now that this will never happen, I work to preserve that of which I care the most. Until morning arises we are guests here, of the Heavenly host.
Watching over sleeping fools, those awake wish they were here too, in the land of the dreamtime, living, regenerating, restoring much needed energy.
Those who spoke, now silent, remember who they were, when sunlight graced the land, and we gave all we could, to save.
Saviour, our trust is in you, lead us to the light, and the dawn of a new season, envisioned on a starry night, just before the fall.

Dominic Winter (c)