Brooke Forbes

There’s fresh water at my teeth, 

As I swim,

Floating eloquently it seems,

Around the layers of jutting rock faces at Ormiston gorge. 

Voices echo and light plays with reflections,

Bouncing from one coloured rock layer to the next. 

I open my mouth to say something, a chamber of sound reverberates backwards, spiralling my mind backwards, too. 

I am transported to a moment in time, when salt water lapped at my teeth. 

I can taste the dry salt edging around my mouth, as I try to keep my head above water, a tide pulling me and my father quickly out to sea. 

Before me, in this moment, I can see one thing: my mother, on the sandy bank, with my brother, one arm up, one arm down, holding my brother back and beckoning my father and I to the shore.

This vision is the balancing act of a mother, one hand pushing, one hand pulling, holding strength, beckoning us all to safety. 

Although my father did most of a physical labour that day, my mother, too, was a hero. 

And, when I emerge from the fresh water depths of Ormiston, fresh from water anywhere, it seems, it feels like I am guided, again, to that moment, to a safety net, to a beckoning to the shore.

And I realise those who can’t be present, are: through instincts built, through measured gestures, through a familiar connection. 

And I leave my swim, confident, and at ease with moving from water to land mass and back again.