Who will guide me over the mountains and through the valleys?
Who will share with me a thousand generations of wisdom?
What kin is out there who can still teach?
Who is in touch with mother earth and the stingray of stars above?
Who will guide the young to sit around a fire and sing?
I look for the elders, I know they are out there –
I feel them around me in the night and my heart wants to open and weep.
I listen to the wind shiver through the gum leaves.
The rocks are silent.
There is so much to learn.
Don Defenderfer is a native of San Francisco who once went on a holiday to Alaska where he met an Australian who told him to visit Tasmania. So he did, and while here he met a woman. That was 40 years ago. He was state coordinator for Landcare for many years, a job that allowed him to be inspired by not only the beauty of the Tasmanian landscape but by the many people that are trying to repair and renew it. He has a Masters Degree in Social Ecology and a Bachelor of Environmental Studies with a minor in writing. He has published three volumes of poetry, and his work has appeared in newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times and The Australian. Two volumes of collected essays and poems, "Tasmania: An island dream" Parts 1 and 2, can be bought through the Forty South Bookshop.
