Running is
Hard
Dirt, pounding up to meet you
Stopped only by your
Soft
Soled Shoes
Bouncing
Breats and
Heaving
Breath
The silence of the rainforest
Drowned out by the
Tangle in your head
And the
Running
Like the wind
Whistling in your ears.
Dripping, trickling, rushing,
Water gushing, gushing,
The falls
Pick yourself up again and
Run
Run
Run
Somewhere between the tortoise and the hare.

Bread-making is a variable art. It's easy to make bread; to make good bread is a fine art. So thinks Sayra as she stands at her kitchen bench, kneading the dough. Her knobbly old knuckles echo the whorls in the wooden bench she kneads on, the bench as familiar as her hands. She has always loved the patterns in the wood that her husband polished up for her so many years ago. Running her hand momentarily along the smooth surface, she notices now that her fingernails need cutting; she can't remember how long it's been.

She looks out across her garden, her hands automatically doing what they have done each morning for years. The golden early-morning sunshine makes the new growth in the trees sparkle, lime-green for the leatherwood; a deeper forest green for the dogwood. The myrtle is slowly going apricot.

As Sayra kneads, and the yeast begins it's process of reaction beneath her fingers, in the warm sunshine that streams in from the big old window, thousands of people are waking up across the country. Some are getting dressed to go to work - in offices, on building sites, in shops. Some are just going to bed - from night-shift, or from the casino or bar where they have spent their weekly income. The farmers have, of course, been up for hours. Today, like most days, they are trying to tackle the problem of lack of water; salination of the soil; slowly starving live-stock; and the inevitable climate change that the government has only just realised exists.

An ocean away, people are waking up and going to bed too... in Africa children are crying for the food they won't see today. Their cry is echoed in India; Russia; Mexico; America. The concerted effort of their waking breath causes a hurricane in Jakarta, where thousands of people are trapped in the floods - many will not be freed. In Iraq, and in Indonesia, unmoved, the soldiers arm themselves for another day at work. The wind dies down again; sweeping over the ocean now, it catches the dying breath of a homeless man who has slept one too many nights in the open. The exhalation is enough to give the wind its power again, and it rips across the Strait and tickles the first fire of the season into life again.

As grimy and weary firefighters are called in, the wind loses some of it's strength at last; until it sweeps into Sayra's garden and brings the leatherwood petals raining down like gentle snow. Sayra looks up and shivers, then wonders why the wind is so hot at this time of the morning. Her hands, however, keep kneading the dough. She shakes her head, and then looks out at her garden in satisfaction as she places the dough on the window sill to rise.