Returning
Nothing could stop my photographer father in his tracks like a tree.
I remember, as a child, our car slowing
then stopping beside a field.
We would watch as he circled his subject,
finger-framing different viewpoints.
Despite my boredom, I grew to understand what was worthy of worship.
My mother can be found in the evening sky.
She comes to me at the end of the day
with her head tilted back, reminding us to look.
What a beautiful sky, she’d say.
Did she mean to draw our focus away from ourselves?
Either way, I am grateful.
Today, in a valley domed by a cobalt sky,
we are celebrating my birthday.
Children and grandchildren.
Framed by a window, I notice a tree—my doppelganger—
gnarled and woody yet valiantly sprouting green growth.
Two birds appear in its branches.
On their honeymoon, my parents rode on horseback through this valley,
staying at a guest house.
After breakfast, their host appeared with a rifle.
It was wartime, food was scarce and rabbits were a plague.
When the gun fired, my parents were walking ahead.
A crimson rosella fell at their feet.
Parrot pie for dinner, lauded the host.
I remember them telling me of their grief—
Crimson Rosellas, an Aboriginal totem,
represent a connection to nature.
They mate for life and despite my parents’ bent over the ancestral bird,
its mate flew down to groom its feathers.
When the pair of crimson rosellas alight on the tree,
I know it is them—my feathered kin.
The next day they flit beside three generations
riding through the valley.
How will I return, I wonder, and what stories of attention
and significance have I told?
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Read by S.E. Street
S.E. Street is an award-winning writer and poet. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.