A Haiku Garden Bed
By Dakota Feirer
Red Cedars’ tears flow
By the wayside waters go
Chase oceans’ echoes
Ghosts take time to grow
Dead hollows make perfect home
Follow moonlight glow
Winding paths shaped like
Forest vines arcs that bind us
In binary, see?
Nothing micro ‘bout
The organisms that map
Cities and organs
Meadows come & go
Like eyes, feet, phones & bones - gone
to eternity
Two ancient shadows
Emerge in the shape of crows
Black, Forsaken, Still Caretakin’
The trees remember
laughs, cries, fires, lies & chainsaws
The trees remember
The people forget
laughs, cries, fires, lies & chainsaws
The people forget
Memory keeper
Of Conversations between
Mother & Father
Story keepers
Of Conversations between
The Earth & Sky
Don’t look away now
An act of consciousness is
What brought you here - breathe
In 2021, we celebrated 50 years of Wollongong Botanic Garden with poems connecting plants, people and place. As part of our New Shoots program, we collaborated with Wollongong Botanic Garden to commission a series of poems, including Dakota Feirer's 'A Haiku Garden Bed', and produce a number of workshops, installations and activities.