Iron and Water

Sometimes the baobab trees in Anzac Square whisper to me, in the way that trees always whisper to me. Trees have gentle voices, generally murmuring their messages only when I touch them, or ask them directly to speak. The energy surrounding them is patient, measured and paced to last decades.

Lately though the baobabs have been shouting. They demand nails driven into their trunks, nails for Shango. There's nothing gentle about them, their desperate voices ringing in my ears every time I walk past the square. They show me images of myself, hammer in hand, pounding tangled snarles of iron into the bark, scaring off the birds and the commuters. The red rust that would run down the trunks. There's always a sense of power, and they brag in their urgent way that the nails would bring the rain.

But I keep walking.