An Incoming Tide

Picture: Peering through trees to Merimbula Lake

An Incoming Tide

It was my privilege and delight to have served, at different intervals of time, in both Bega and Pambula Parishes.  Both of them celebrate 150 years this year.  I am unable to attend either of the celebrations.  A truly beautiful part of this State of New South Wales, our family had holidayed there at times.  Later I would work there.  Part of me will always feel a yearning to be there. So, while I was adrift on a sea of memories, impressions and feelings, a poem emerged.  It is included here.

Picture: Snug Cove at Eden

An Incoming Tide

An incoming tide

Of gratitude

Laps

Upon the shore

Of my thankful heart.

Hearing the news of 150 years

Fell upon me

A wistful haze

And then

A start!

Speak, I must

Of tidings,

Wishes to folks

Friends and others,

Who dwell upon

Meadows and hills,

Crags and beaches,

Or points and rocky ramparts,

That keep watch,

Over billowing seas.

Ah, the mighty Bega Valley

And Sapphire Coast.

Jewel that glints

And glistens,

In the eye

Of everyone who has seen it,

Felt it,

And breathed

The briny air.

And where it has

Taken them.

Taken them

It has.

To a place within,

Where a little piece of coast

Has settled in the heart.

And,

If one listens,

They can hear the reverberations,

The swirling sound,

Like a sea in a shell,

Stirring the caverns

Of our inner selves,

Keeping always a little current

Of this valley and coast

inside.

Picture: looking up the wending Yowaka River

Simon C.J. Falk           23 September 2015

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