THE NAME OF THIS PLACE IS THE NAME OF ME 
This poem was created by Erin Lindsay using only text from poems created by community participants of the One Planet, Countless world project in collaboration with QWF and their members.

The name of this place is the name of me,
and I remember ghosts blooming in my solar plexus.


There is lush green grass behind the cottage, right?
I reach the cliff. “Sorry, I say.”


I see moss and myself resisting.
Pressing down into it, I see a park


and the life that was designed for me. 
Here, there is thick humid air and purple mud.


Though I haven’t found signs of water,
the wilderness has allowed me to be:

reddish earth, relevant, no words,
a dog chasing a Frisbee. 

I can hear the voices of women washing
their clothes in the river. A clash of colours,


familiar and happy. In this and my thoughts, I maw myself 
to sleep to the sound of wind through the jack pines.


I feel this place bare
on the soles of my feet. Here, it snows thick.


Here, I could be safe and secure
as sun warmed stones or a “barbe-a-papa” sky. Wistful and gooey.


Not unpleasant. Of course, and nothing is familiar,
but I still remember


daylight coming through the window
of the back door and the kitchen verandah 

where we ate lunch during the summer. To be real, I could momentum.
The pull would be crisp:

misty foam, or was it a piece of shell?
Either way, I could be born

here: the sand enveloping, sheets drying on the clothesline,
a car starting, high-gravity mangoes falling hungry with a thud. 

A dog barks in the distance.
I can’t remember what I was doing,

but I know that the tree trunks were green.
The dog rushes to the door. In two minutes, 

I could be my surroundings. I query myself
as rain falls down on the roof: Are we infinite, gone or ruthless?

Ok, all is not lost forever,
so load the truck. I know there are no words. 

And that so much can be obscene.
But the core could be solid. Here.

Good gosh, good meat. In this place, 
it would have to be.