Hunger Moon, February 2026

A month of movement, of rivers and wings. Musings on impermanence, and making a wild olive leaf oxymel.

Dear friends,

This full-moon cycle has been one of movement for me, of rivers and wings.

Impermanence is on my mind. The most obvious sign of time passing is my baby niece’s cheeks which grow plumper every time I see her. Her arms and legs are taking on an increasing roly-poly form.

C and I are making preparations to leave home (again) to spend a year or two in the UK. This month I said goodbye to a couple of dear friends as they also fly the nest, somewhere far from where I will be. It is miserable to stand in the park, watching the back of someone you love grow smaller, then disappear. But it’s also hard to know what to do with the feelings. You jump in your car, you drive home. You write a poem or two, and carry on with life.

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P and I shared an evening together before she left. We met in a bit of wildness that suburbia hasn’t managed to penetrate yet, and followed the dirt paths that were most appealing to us. She was barefoot, with a basket of homemade dinner over her arm. The bush was moving with birdsong, and the late summer grasses were fairly dissolving into light. I had that distant feeling, as if watching the creation of a memory. We found a spot by the river and alternated between absolute silence and a rush of conversation.

I requested we meet by the river because I just finished reading the book Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane. I posed the question to P, but the answer seemed obvious to both of us. Even so, contemplating the different ways to answer whether a river is alive feels enriching. It deepens my sense of just how interconnected life is. A river is not just alive, but a community of life. Sitting by the river, I felt the thought reflected back at me: I am not just alive, but a community of life.

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I spent some time at my parents’ property this month, and despite initially feeling that the bush wouldn’t hold as much appeal in its browned summer state, I was mesmerised. The sun hanging yellow and sour in the lemon tree, the cry of the black cockatoos flying overhead, the smooth, pale trunks of the eucalypts. Everywhere I looked was like falling in love.

I walked a few times to the creek where I’d chased the watery reflection of the moon last spring. Now it lies dusted and cracking, flanked by hollow grass stems that rest lightly on one another like an aging head of hair. The creek is not dead, but waiting. Not wintering in hibernation, but summering— lying low, panting in the shade. There is no water, but the shape and curve of the creek remains. It’s got me thinking: is the creek water only? Aren’t the earth-contours the creek itself too, not merely its container?

In winter, the creek is jovial and on the move. In summer, it grows quiet and watchful. Sitting in the dry creek, there is still a sense of flow, the echo of movement. Forgive me, I say, for deciding you are only good company in the wet-season. I have reduced you to water. And I have reduced water to something I can wrap my head around. I had wished to slice the world into alive and not, rather than just being with you as you are.

You will not return in the winter— you are here now.

The creek in two seasons.

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There are many wild olive trees growing along the creek. While flicking through the book Eat Weeds by Diego Bonetto, I was reminded about the medicinal properties of olive leaves. I decided to recreate an olive leaf oxymel that I had first made at a permaculture course run by Perth City Farm.

An oxymel is made by infusing a herb in apple cider vinegar and honey. Take one teaspoon of olive leaf oxymel a couple of times a day when you start to feel a cold or flu coming on, or as an immune booster to prevent sickness.

How to make your own olive leaf oxymel:

1. Gather several branches of olive leaf. If foraging in the wild, check to make sure there are no signs of spraying or chemical poisoning. Olives are considered weeds in some contexts.

2. Strip the leaves off the branches and chop into small chunks. The more surface area, the more opportunity for extracting the medicinal compounds in the leaves. Add to a jar, until half full.

3. Add equal parts organic apple cider vinegar and honey to the jar and give a good mix. If using a metal lid, put a bit of baking paper between the lid and jar to prevent rusting.

4. Store in a cool, dark place for four weeks, shaking every now and then.

5. Strain, and compost the leaves or toss back in the garden. Take a teaspoon two or three times a day at the first signs of a cold or flu, or as a preventative.

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This moon there were many birthdays, reunions and gatherings to attend. All month I felt as if I was filling up and draining out at the same time. There came a point where I hungered for quiet, unremarkable days filled with focused work and lonely evening walks. It’s a predictable kind of longing. Aren’t we always longing for equilibrium, for what is lacking in our lives, for the opposite to what is out of balance? Sometimes I can laugh at my flip-flop longings. Sometimes they are very serious.

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At T’s birthday party, the children rush down the sandy path towards the ocean, hurried and instinctual. They swim and lick salt from their lips. When the sun lowers, they rummage through the sand dunes for dried plants they call ‘rabbit tails’ and ‘spiky things’. Bring more spiky things! one of them calls. They are focused, working hard at their creating. Late afternoon light shines through the coastal scrub, giving the edges of skin and hair a fiery glow. Their little bodies dissolving into light, into landscape.

I always saw my nieces and nephews in a world of their own, operating parallel, but separate to the world of adults. Now when I watch the older children, I see that the worlds are beginning to blur for them. I feel protective and powerless. Like there is a goodbye in the process of happening (but isn’t there always a goodbye in the process of happening, each moment moving into the next as it does?)

I suppose we all go through this, when the cocoon of imagination and intimacy starts to rip and tear. One day we are walking out of Narnia and into ‘real life’. The doorway back never opens for us again. We only remember our innocence in hazy moments, such as now, when I am sitting quietly in the dunes, watching children gather their spiky things with a serious playfulness.

But I suppose there is a doorway of sorts, if you let a child lead you there. The children in my life are often leading me back to play and instinct. I submit to their leadership.

This month my niece and I made nature wings out of treasures we found in the local bushland. I felt a kind of creative synchronicity working alongside her for hours of focused attention. She retrains me to create from instinct, to enjoy the process of making.

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Lately my nieces have been calling out my predictability. When we draw together, they peer at my page and say: Of course you are drawing something from nature, Mimi. I feel seen.

Sometimes it is nice to go into new territory, exploding your own ideas about yourself and what you’re drawn to. At other times it is nice to go deeper and deeper into what you have always loved, to burrow down, to see that there are no limits the deeper you go, only more worlds unfolding.

Sometimes it feels as if there is only one thing I am saying. One essential idea that has burrowed itself into me, as much as I am burrowing into it.

Making nature wings with my niece, inspired by the book ‘Wild Child’.

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I am trying to laugh more, to invite play into my days, probably because there is so much to despair about (again, a desire for equilibrium). One of the purest joys this month has been playing badminton with my friends. We flit across the court as if we are performing the dance of a dragonfly. We fall into laughter when things don’t turn out right, when shots are missed, when the quirks of our bodies make themselves known.

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We had some strangely cool summer days in January. The relief was undermined by an eerie discomfort at the ‘un-rightness’ of feeling cold this time of year. The predictability of our seasons seems to be slipping. We are losing our ability to put absolute faith in them, that they will roll around as expected, repeating themselves again and again.

“Something in us dares trust in the timeless quality of the seasons as a relatively stable reference point of accord with ceaseless change,” Susan Murphy writes in her essay ‘Alive in the Skin of a River’s Flow’. “But now, a climate that has been reliable enough for our flourishing is falling into chaos, threatening even the timeless procession of the seasons themselves to the point that they are beginning to signal inescapable impermanence.”

Impermanence is inescapable. It chases me into my dreams. Every poem I write drips with it. I watch the story of impermanence in a documentary about Hayao Miyazaki. And as much as I can, I try to accept its company. Welcome, I say when I remember to.

Early in the year, G tells me she likes to be tossed about by the power of a wave, to feel small. This is the attitude I’m trying to embody. I think the word is surrender.

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I have begun putting together a collection of poetry from the past two years. It is about longing and seasons. And impermanence, of course, is the presence that hums underneath it all. It has been painful to write, and also irresistible. I look forward to sharing it with you all in some moons from now.

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For now, I am wishing you many mornings of birdsong, and happy dreams when you sleep.

Love, Melody