Underneath The Morning Star
Rain has fallen during the night and has given a drink of water to the earth. The air is thick and humid with suspended moisture, and balmy and warm to breathe in. Just the way I like it. After emptying themselves of their content the clouds have lifted and shifted, off somewhere else, and have left the night sky stark and clean, starry-eyed and black. The Southern Cross and its two pointers are hanging high in the southern sky behind me, Orion is drawing his bow and flashing his diamond sparkling sword belt across the bay to the west, and there, high, mighty and lonely in the dark eastern sky, sits Venus, bright and round and shiny. Not the faintest hint of a glimmer of a shimmer of impending daylight can be seen anywhere around her. It is so early in the morning that, really, it’s closer to being late at night, if not right smack bang in the middle of the night. I walk through the shadows of the banksias and the pandanuses down to the water’s edge, and wade out into the inky b...