This morning I had a moment of silence in my favourite place, upon my board, in the ocean and through squinted eye from the rain. I came straight back and spilled out my thoughts here, my ode to the Anzacs, and because I love Australia!
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I bobbed up and down, closing my eyes relishing the gentle rise and fall.
Where the waters and sky meet their borders I sat propped up, my board and body effortlessly held up by the might of the ocean.
I turned my gaze downwards and watched with wide eyes the shadows at play on the sandy floor. They danced with joyous movement as if they were grateful for the sun allowing them life and dance for a moment in time.
And as if they were aware of the shrouds of dark smudgy clouds filling the sky, they danced ferociosuly with what life they had left. Just before the clouds closed in, the sun whispered in strength to the shadows “I’ll be back in no time at all”, and just like that the clouds swallowed the sun whole like a pack of hungry wolves.
The shadows went into hiding and the waters turned a shade darker than Aegean Blue. It was time for the surface of the deep to play. Small drops at first covered the glassy waters, then large pelts dropped in what felt like slow motion.
Creating ripples by the thousands as they bombed down from above like World War 2. War, at the mention of that seamlessly small three - lettered word my heart became heavy and burdened, a mental and tangible burden I’m sure my surfboard felt the weight of underneath…
I can only imagine the bombs of rain trudged through, the rain of bombs fought through. The weak knees upon mountain- top, the wearing soles of shoes walked miles of sun-worn parched lands. The tears shed over brother’s lives and the burden of life. The quell of sadness to keep the fight, the whispered prayers through bloodied, gritted teeth.
Yet of the fallen and wounded there is something greater that stands. A spirit not shaken nor soiled, untouched and unwounded, that like the rains upon the seas creates ripples throughout the land. A smile that speaks of pain overcome, a higher purpose. Through parted cracked lips of old, the stories are passed down, never to be forgotten, forever told…
Just like that, as though the sun heard my thoughts, it shone through the envelope of dark clouds and painted across the sky of my mind “from the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them” and so once again I closed my eyes in silence feeling the movements of the ocean below, grateful for after the fall comes the rise – Lest we forget!