Friends of Tasman Island

The April Newsletter from Friends of Tasman Island is great reading – with historical and contemporary reflections from people who have loved this island.  A new book ‘Keepers of the Light: A family’s life on Tasman Island’
by Rachel Chesmer is announced (now available for $20 incl. postage within Australia in the Wildcare Shop) and there’s even a poem that brings the wild island to us at home.

Happy reading!

Tasman Island Revisited

by Anne Landers

Siren songs singing
In harmony humming
Whispering tales of silence and sea
Crying a love song
For cliff and for island
Calling, yes calling
To all that I be.

Turn back the dream clock,
Turn back to the mystery
Of all that I am and
Of all that I see.
Back in the yesteryear
From whence I have journeyed.
To Hear-Now-Beyond
A completeness in me.

Yesterday’s sorrow grows
Through to tomorrow,
Tears in the winter
Bring growth in the spring.
How sad when we fail
To live by the promise
Of new birth and regrowth
That springtime will bring.

The song of the skylark
Circuitous singing;
The rake of the rail as it clutters below;
The mutter of muttonbirds
Mating and nesting,
Blends with the bark of the seal far below.

All these are sounds that
Belong on my island
Part of the being who carries away
All of the wonders, the sounds and the splendour
Of Tasman who sits on her guard in the bay.