Breathe Larapuna
Lily Davidson (she/her)
I am a convict-descendant from lutruwita/Tasmania, and this positionality informs my writing. I am deeply occupied with the weathered beauty of my hometown larapuna/Bay of Fires and the ancient tales etched into the land, yet how this intersects with a story of brutal and ongoing colonialism, and where I can contribute as a transient being in this complex web.
Poetry has the power to hold a reader in the present moment; it is meditative. I find resonance in earthly rhythms – seasons, tides, sunsets and moonrises – and the rhythms of the body – our heartbeats, our pulses. I love to play with composition, making space for breath. The silence around a word often holds the greatest meaning.
‘breathe larapuna’ draws from a grounding technique suggested by my psychologist – close your eyes, think of the place where you most belong, and inhale its colours.
Naarm
might i rest my eyes
know the place try an inhale
of home’s colours
then –
what is the colour of salt?
azure – perhaps cornsilk
but how is the colour of space? bone
what of exhaling waves? simple
blue violet – blue yonder – blizzard – carolina – celeste
what is the shade of sun’s tepid trick?
flirt – flame
yet burns for days?
atomic tangerine
a falling tide to leave those hills of sand? the busy critters building castles?
black coral – cultured pearl
and what is the colour of mother hooded plover nimbly tending her nest, low in wind trodden wildflower? fawn – fern – fallow – field – flax
and our skin goosebumped?
baby powder
of squinting to horizon – to know a pod a ship a rock, hope, a whale?
saffron – dark sea green
and the linger of smoke, from larapuna’s first fires?
burnt butter – burnished – umber
how could there be words for the gradience of gums?
all the musk bud slates fail to grip the stories in those old branch knots
my dear colour of parents waiting ahead, held hands / our pup once in his weaving dance
coffee and cream – cinnamon – cherry and apricot
– to amber – violet – to lavender
– to love
inhale
hold lungs brick red
leave the charcoal city
blow swell to shore
drawn out once more
breathe larapuna.