Your breath
from outside of me, from that space
that touches my ear
caresses cheek and softly kisses hair
inserts itself into my blood
It knows this place
knows the surging
through veins, the channels
it has traveled for millennia
It flows the rivers there
just as it has followed
the rivers past
singing the songlines
of generations
singing up life
in womb to womb
birthing the fluids of many.
Your breath
once entered, takes a familiar form
knows its shape and size -
the words that must be sung forth
the words, that must vibrate again
from my being
into being
those melodies that come from stars
and are carried in water’s song.
Can you teach me
how to hear through liquid so I may continue your breath?
Can you teach me
how to become the vibration that flows from stars to earth?
your songs that are held in water?
your knowing that is seen in stars?
I long to bound across the great divide
your footsteps travel
not with trepidatious step
my feet tread lightly
across green and gold grasses
sink into wet sand
by the edge of great oceans
and bury into soft soils
where ancestors dance with the wind
I wash them in cool waters
staring past reflection to inky depths
right through you - hidden to my eyes
flushed with tears.
Cupping the ache of longing
my grandmother’s lost children
my father’s absent counsel
my great grandfather’s aching heart
have tried to find you
have grasped at empty hands
to fill our hollow chests
we have swallowed stars
as you guardian the rolling storms over mountains
not knowing your gift -
that heavenly lightning
heals the spirit of the land
and charges our own
and I, standing in those rains
let your droplets fall
my skin seeking to understand the ghost of you
but you are not in the rains and winds of longing.
Now I pound the earth in dance
in rhythms of communal spirit
heard in hundreds
feet echoing your heart
re-beating the land
and that -
is where I find you
where your song, your breath
quiet in me
becomes loud
where longing and embrace
are entwined
it’s here I feel your blood again
when we dance
under moon and stars
our feathers pointing to the sky
ochred bodies in formation
swirling the dirt
witness and participant.
Yes, I hear you whisper now.
We are stars and water
Always.
Nicole Smede is a multi-disciplinary artist of Worimi and European descent, living and creating on Dharawal Country. Proud of her heritage, she works through language to reconnect to ancestry and culture, using voice, song, sound and poetry to explore ideas around landscape, connectedness, and ancestry.
She has performed at Parliament House and the National Multicultural Festival, and her voice has been heard globally on award-winning film scores. Her poetry can be found in journals, visual and sound pieces, exhibitions, publications and anthologies including Australian Poetry Journal; Mascara Literary Review; Never Heard of Them, Baby Teeth Journal (2019); Guwayu: for all times, Magabala Books (2020); What we Carry, Recent Work Press (2021); and 20x20x12 Sensing Place, Manta Publishing (2021). In 2020, Nicole was the co-recipient of the 2020 Shoalhaven Arts Board Grant, a finalist in the Meroogal Women's Art Prize and shortlisted for the 2020 Red Room Poetry Fellowship. In 2022 Nicole was a recipient of the inaugural Space to Create residency through Australia Council, Yil Lull Studio and ANU and finalist in the Newcastle Poetry Prize.
Her work is acquired and held in national collecting institutions.
About the work
freed from the body / dispersed across time
an essence captured and trapped / released in the present
embodied through the act of listening
embodied through the act of reading
a bridge across time in words / memories / sound / knowing.
Nyiirun mirriiyn bathu (We are stars and water) is a poetic dialogue investigating the idea of memory as ghost - a past and present exchange in verse and sound.
Issue 46: Ghost
Guest edited by Xanthe Dobbie.
This issue features new commissions from:
Your breath
from outside of me, from that space
that touches my ear
caresses cheek and softly kisses hair
inserts itself into my blood
It knows this place
knows the surging
through veins, the channels
it has traveled for millennia
It flows the rivers there
just as it has followed
the rivers past
singing the songlines
of generations
singing up life
in womb to womb
birthing the fluids of many.
Your breath
once entered, takes a familiar form
knows its shape and size -
the words that must be sung forth
the words, that must vibrate again
from my being
into being
those melodies that come from stars
and are carried in water’s song.
Can you teach me
how to hear through liquid so I may continue your breath?
Can you teach me
how to become the vibration that flows from stars to earth?
your songs that are held in water?
your knowing that is seen in stars?
I long to bound across the great divide
your footsteps travel
not with trepidatious step
my feet tread lightly
across green and gold grasses
sink into wet sand
by the edge of great oceans
and bury into soft soils
where ancestors dance with the wind
I wash them in cool waters
staring past reflection to inky depths
right through you - hidden to my eyes
flushed with tears.
Now I pound the earth in dance
in rhythms of communal spirit
heard in hundreds
feet echoing your heart
re-beating the land
and that -
is where I find you
where your song, your breath
quiet in me
becomes loud
where longing and embrace
are entwined
it’s here I feel your blood again
when we dance
under moon and stars
our feathers pointing to the sky
ochred bodies in formation
swirling the dirt
witness and participant.
Yes, I hear you whisper now.
We are stars and water
Always.
Runway Journal acknowledges the custodians of the nations our digital platform reaches.
We extend this acknowledgement to all First Nations artists, writers and audiences.
Runway Journal is produced by a voluntary board and pay our contributors above industry rates. If you have found some delight in this content, please consider a one-time or recurring monthly donation.
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Runway Journal is produced by a voluntary board and pay our contributors above industry rates. If you have found some delight in this content, please consider a one-time or recurring monthly donation.
Runway Journal acknowledges the custodians of the nations our digital platform reaches.
We extend this acknowledgement to all First Nations artists, writers and audiences.
Runway is supported by