For decades the little coastal village 
where I stayed with my widowed aunt
was held in a time-warp. 
Every summer I returned to the same place: 
moored trawlers waiting for the tide to turn; 
fast flowing river; crescent curve of white sand; 
the constant surge and sound of surf; 
wide swathe of dunes and in that place 
where the trees grew most tall, 
squatted the mystery man, the hermit, Pippy Bill. 

I don’t know if I ever glimpsed Bill. 
Perhaps he was one of those tanned, bare-footed men
digging for pippies on the beach, the foam flecked water 
rippling in patterns around their ankles,   
but he was a figure of wonderment to me. 
I could not understand why, in all the joy of the world,
all the pleasure, excitement and discovery of friendship, 
someone would deliberately choose a life of isolation.

Much later, when I was a grown man, 
I asked my aunt if she knew anything about Pippy Bill. 
Bill, of course I do. Bill is William Atkins. 
He was the chemist. He had friends, 
was part of the community. 
When his wife died, he couldn’t cope. 
He sold everything, his house, his business
and built a little shack in the dunes. 
He’s lived there ever since. 

I thought then how sad it is to love someone 
so much that their loss is more than can be borne. 
I saw William Atkins in his pharmacy, 
shuddering at the thought of customers, 
shrinking from their sympathy,
saw him in the house that still smelled of his wife, 
and where every object reminded him of her, 
saw his turmoil, questioning, planning, resolution, 
saw him shed his chemist’s coat and finally,
carrying the overbearing burden of his grief, 
saw him walking alone into the dunes. 

Then I thought how wonderful it is to love so much, 
acknowledging that loss and grief is terrible  
but marveling that in a world filled with domestic abuse 
and where women are traumatized by the very Courts 
in which they have sought some justice, 
someone like Willaim Atkins can love so much 
that loss is a burden almost impossible to bear. 

And I like to think that in those dunes he found some peace: 
his friends became the curved beaked honeyeaters; 
the huge, gorgeous, slow moving black cockatoos 
flapping from tree to tree brought him delight; 
that joy came from the flocks of rainbow lorikeets 
with their iridescent feathers, their comical chatter 
and their hanging upside down raucous squabble; 
the tiny wrens weaving their exquisite gossamer nests 
from leaf, twig and web gave him wonder. 

But most of all I like to think that in the dunes 
he sensed the deep connection that binds the earth, 
grasped its mystery, savagery and beauty,  
and then heard her voice in the ceaseless murmur of the sea, 
saw her in the brightness of the circling stars, 
smelt her in the honey laden flowers, 
and gazing heavenwards or out to sea,
each night he whispered, 

I will come to come, I will come to you, 
I am coming to you 

until the turning world turned
beyond the last breath of Pippy Bill, 
the mysterious hermit, the man of the dunes,
who through grief or love turned his back 
on the human world and found his final peace, alone, 
in those rich and beauty laden dunes.