Memory under a Bunya Pine

 

I stare at gigantic cones

No, I have never seen these before

Though I have walked

These meadows

For many a year

 

I hear a chuckle

The Bunya pines laugh –

Your many years

Are only a second

In the eternity of our times

 

Indeed, they have been here

Since Jurassic times

On this Farm itself

For centuries now

(While we, how do we compare?

 

We, who never belonged

To any country lands

Moving on, year after year

In search of a little hope,

Some love and sustenance)

 

I look up at their straggly heads

Then below, at durian pines

And wonder

Why do I feel a light of joy?

When they speak again

 

You perhaps have been here before

As an Elder of an ancient land

The fruiting season

A festival for your tribe

Food, pine nuts and that is enough

 

To celebrate

The essence of life

Something you’ll have lost

Except sometimes, as these

A tendril memory from aeons past

 

I touch a pine cone

Waiting like a time machine

I feel a tingling joy

Existence seems enough

The sun sets, but the future remembers…

 

7^th Jan 2025

 

The bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii) is an ancient native conifer of cultural and spiritual significance to several language groups in eastern Australia. It’s known as bonyi bonyi in Wakka Wakka and bunyi in Kabi Kabi.

For thousands of years, Indigenous groups gathered to share the edible nuts at bunya gatherings at locations such as Kabi Kabi Country in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

It is only this summer , for the first time in many years, that I spotted many of these gigantic cones under a large stand of Bunya Pines close by, at a historic site called the Farm that made me aware of these fruits and their aboriginal linkages – celebration of abundance from little, celebration of any aspect of nature that stands out, celebration of life and existence.