Downunder and Yours
This is the fifth poem in the All the Ways I Love You series—one poem a day leading up to my husband’s birthday. Today’s is for the great leap, the turbulence, the steak sandwiches, and the harbour that greeted us when we moved to Australia.
We didn’t say goodbye—
just “see you later.”
Because we meant it.
Because the roots we grew on the West Coast
were deep, but not confining.
Because love doesn’t stay still,
it goes with you.
So we boarded that plane
with passports, too many bags,
and just the right amount of recklessness.
You held my hand at the airport—
you always do.
And later, somewhere over Manila,
when turbulence found us mid-sky,
you rushed back to me,
arms steady,
even as the plane was anything but.
We laughed about it after.
How the flight attendant gave me the lecture
on seatbelt safety—
but I was wearing mine.
She wasn’t.
She hit her head.
(I hope she’s okay.)
Then Sydney—
bright as a postcard,
harbour glinting like it had secrets to keep.
You’ve shown me many harbours,
but that one was the clearest.
The first to greet us in a new chapter.
(Calgary is first place we’ve lived that doesn’t have one.
Why are we landlocked again?)
We met the usual assumptions.
The server was curt
until I clarified: Canadian, not American.
That old dance.
You smiled through it,
laughed with me
as I faced the existential crisis of
no coffee at the hotel.
Send help.
Lunch came with a steak sandwich
and another reminder
that sometimes being mistaken
is the only way people learn.
(And I am not afraid to correct gently but firmly
when steak is at stake.)
But oh—
the wildlife.
The wonders.
Tasmanian devils pacing like ghosts in fast-forward,
platypuses doing whatever it is they do,
koalas curled in trees like sleepy daydreams.
Yes, I snuck a little pat.
No regrets.
And then—
him.
The crocodile.
A prehistoric marvel.
Cold-eyed.
Still as judgement.
I could have stared for hours.
(He’s my fifth favourite animal, you know.
You nodded like you’ve always known.)
We crossed the world.
Traded oceans.
Unraveled new maps
just to draw our names across the bottom.
And through all of it—
the sky shakes,
the accent corrections,
the koala encounters,
the coffee droughts—
you were there.
Holding my hand,
making me laugh,
making this life
so wildly, wonderfully
ours.
