The irises are starting again. Late Spring has arrived with wind gusts which threatens to knock them sideways, and I will them to be strong and stand tall so I can admire them in the sunshine. I have moved so many, to better positions, and I am thrilled that they are budding again.

For some they are an example of adaptation and change - they grow in a variety of soils. I think about how appropriate that is now, as Australian rejects the inclusion of an indigenous voice in the constitution. Now is the time to recover quickly from a broken heart and think: what next? How do we move on from this division and anger? How do we serve the people we have historically displaced without giving up in bitterness and despair? How can we now define ourselves as a nation?

With it's holy trinity of petals, it can also be seen as a symbol of hope and faith. I hope things will get better. I hope for peace. I hope for the emancipation of all people, for the bombing to stop in Gaza, for apartheid and oppression and murder in the name of war to stop. I don't have a faith to walk alongside this hope. It's just a dogged default in me that refuses to believe that we can't be better. I reject any religious faith because those who profess a belief in God can, in the same breath, call for genocide. I was horrified to find a Jewish friend overseas who was posting about this very thing online. 'Our people will stand for oppression no longer', he decried. 'We are prepared to hunt down every man, woman and child who fight against us'. Wait what? For years I've seen this guy preach peace and understanding for his people, who he believes have been historically oppressed. Now he's calling for the death of all Palestinians? Are you mental? How can you not forget the lessons of the Holocaust? How can you wish a holocaust on others?

The Wild Iris by by Louise Gluck

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.

In ancient Egypt, the iris was viewed as a symbol of protection and was used in rituals to help guide the dead into the afterlife.. The existence of afterlife or not, I think of the dead under the rubble in Gaza, the boy under the mother who shielded him when she was shot by Hamas, soaked in her blood and texting family to say what had happened, whole Palestinian families losing their bloodlines, the terrible, terrible atrocities on both sides. As families bury their dead, their hearts break. It is a collective trauma that we all watch from our screens in horror. I place imaginary irises in the dust, at the feet of the dead, and mourn humanity that we must treat each other so.

Of course, the iris is simply elegance and grace, a flower of absolute beauty, that does no less than make one's heart sing.

I cut irises and weep, I cut irises and smile, I cut irises and hope for a more peaceful end to the year than this terrible, terrible season that is befelling so many of us.

With Love,

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