Giving Voice to the Brunswick Valley

*Giving Voice to the Brunswick Valley ~ List of Poems*
CIRCA 1940 - boyhood memories
Welcome to Country Wollumbin Kangaroo A Cicada Sings Summer Valley Flood The News at #1 Tunnel Saw Mill Wellhead Saturday Bath Glory Box	For My Own Good Somewhere to come from Count Your Blessings Home Delivery Village Butcher Village Plumber Village Blacksmith Village Keepers The Greek Café	Railway Crossing Song of Grass Dying Footbridge Brunswick Heads Go and get the whiting Riverside Pine Picnic Blanket Phrenology Reading Euchre Night Boy with Dog
CIRCA 2000 - an elder's perspective
Down to the Sea Village Poet Tyagarah Wreckers - a fable Accounting Farmyard Cocktails Bush Flame Beach Triptych Gaia Backpackers	Mail Order Bride The Tribe Fishing Partners The Antbed Court Dalley Street Coolamon Care In Case of Bad Luck Anzac Child Tomato Sandwich	Caravans & Whales Pig Dog Happy Hour Rainforest Remnant Mullumbimby Ladies Jack & The Sheoaks A Meeting of Kite-flyers Park Swing The Batman Brunswick Heads Revisited

to start of 'giving voice'

Wayamba the Turtle

by Peter Muraay Djeripi Mulcahy

this white fella imagines a welcome to country I out of the dreamtime living their dreaming clans from all over are one mob renewing their dreamtime coming down into this valley some to visit others to pass on to the eastern edge there to make laws they will take home west over mountain north and south across broad rivers II they are coming guided by star by bird animal land and spirits across the mountains and down their east slopes following songlines along ridgelines through valleys to walk by the river on soft earth paths under trees and the valley peoples are welcoming all to their land of plenty III visitors are feasting on bunyah nuts on scrub turkeys on goanna and paddymelon and eating fish from river traps and at bora rings they are sharing their songs and dance telling of their lore and totems and places they are from and all are belonging to this country land is their mother
poetry index

Wollumbin Kangaroo

Wollumbin, is the Indiginous name for what
Captain Cook later called Mount Warning.

A squat of booyong trees
in a caldera gully
on lower Wollumbin —

their summer shadows float
on haunch-high grass, slap
bare patches of basalt.

Through this portal
old man kangaroo re-enters
Gondwana.

Even Goori people
don't see the mountain
assimilate grey boomer.

Roo sprawls, ruminates
killingtime-dreamingtime, certain
his mountain won't give him up

until sun's dying release —
a breeze to stir fur, bring
smell of water, fresh grass, female.

Then he'll stand full height, twitch,
snort, scratch until the moment's right
to bound away and become the night.

“Goori” is how the Ngarakwal prople
of the Brunswick valley refer to themselves.

poetry index

A Cicada Sings Summer

In a valley gripped by fecund summer
cicadas, invisible green on green,
rest silent until sex stirs. Confused, Young Cicada
stretches flexes
his high speed muscles over timbal membranes,
waits for the master-drummer's call.

An outburst of drumming flogs the valley,
he joins the manic tattoo of twenty thousand paramours
heating, competing, beating out their overtures.

As if switched off the mass of sexual want
implodes to instant emptiness
and a straining after love's response
in air still bruised.

Summer's endless summerness drains his life
in fruitless invocations. Safe but unheard within the flock,
wasting in a fertile world until

There!
on highest leaf in reckless silhouette
our lone drummer
taps tremolo, then steadies on his beat
and all the world is listening.

poetry index

Brunswick Valley Flood

A thunderhead sprouts to the south,
slow-boils to grey-white. Tormented
it pinballs the Great Dividing Range
until ripped by Koonyum spurs

it dumps on eastern slopes
steep and deforested. Rivulets
now cataracts, send the Brunswick racing
beween its lowering banks.

Wind flails trees in a whip-lash dance,
flattens paspalum fields, thrashes cane,
cowers the cattle, then suddenly stills
like a child whose tantrum's spent.

A cage of rain locks up Mullumbimby.
Rising tides invest the Nudgel streets
and in the local they nod and talk
of record highs, of bridges gone under.

The river slips its banks, skins the farms
and wears their pelts as an earthy stain.
Water effaces our world, steals its chattels.
And everything's down to the sea.

Brunswick River

A Brunswick Heads street

Billinudgel

poetry index

Fettlers

The News at Number One Tunnel, circa 1940 By Number One tunnel the passenger train going north out of Mullum is down to a walk. Six felt-hatted fettlers planted waist-deep in a bracken patch: one yells, all join in, Paper?Paper. Paper?Paper?Paper. The incantation works – windows glint up, elbows throw rolled-up papers out through the train's sooty veil. In slow motion they tumble end-over-end through other-world air until wind catches and pages flare like sprung egrets then flutter down to bring War to the bush, spill the King and his Dogs and Princesses, land Bradman, Darcy and Phar Lap at the gang's feet. In the rockabye wake of the train men turn hunters, race after fugitive pages, jam the Catholic Worker under a Herald masthead, crush fruit and veggie market reports into comics. One presses Womans Weekly patterns, recipes and a smiling Queen against his sweaty singlet. Wearing self-conscious grins and their spoils they scramble back to their railway trikes where they pin down the news until knock-off time, under wooden tucker boxes.
poetry index

Hollingsworth saw mill, Mullumbimby
(Later, the site for Byron Shire offices.)

Smaller mills were located at places like Main Arm

Saw Mill, circa 1940

Morning glory has grabbed his slab and shingle home
at the dead end of a dirt track in the Main Arm valley
of timber butts – mute tombstones on denuded hills.
An awkward handshake. We sit on stumps to chat.

I know he sees my eyes drawn down to his left hand
where orphan thumb bridges three stumps to touch
his chubby little finger – the nicotine stains line up.
Flicks a woodchip, says his boys’ve moved to town.

I look at the rusted-up mill, imagine a giant cedar log
chained to a lumbering trolley, hear the ripsaw shriek...
Mechanical failure? Carelessness? Nemesis?
He talks with pride of forebears – pioneer cedar getters.

Does he relive the mutilation? Forgive those people
who flinch from his touch? Sour silence. No birds.
Finally asks, ‘What do you think this place’d bring?”
indicating its range with a wave of his wasteland hand.

poetry index

Wellhead, circa 1940 His mother knuckle-raps each rung of the house rainwater tank. The tone changes down near the bottom. Near empty. Sets a straw hat on her boy's head, offers an apologetic smile. He, faking it, grabs a wire-handled bucket, heads for the well two hundred metres down the slope of summer-polished grass. The well waits under planks Dad adzed before he died. Slides the centre plank aside – earth-breath fetid and sticky as cobwebs, congeals his face. The water sulks twenty feet down. Frogs see a skinny boy straddling the sky. Walls ooze. A metronome of metallic drips. Earth humours, primordial, malevolent. This netherworld maw is the night stage for dreams of drowning. The well knows he's come to take four gallons, no more, no less. He casts the square-mouthed bucket down so it bites off a chunk of water, settles, fills. He wraps rope round wrist, braces legs astride the gap. Suddenly, as if to catch the well off guard, he hauls hand under hand. The bucket breaks clear, but gathers full weight as the earth fights back. For muscle-corded minutes the prize sways, trembling in the clay throat of the world, balanced between pull of the earth and a family's need. He hauls for dear life. To pause is to lose, to restart with weakened muscles, diluted resolve. Sobbing he lands the bucket, doubles up in pain. Recovered, he ceremonially sips earth's water, his hands a communion cup. He reseals the hole to keep cattle out, the unspeakable in, until next time.
poetry index

Saturday Bath, circa 1940 Kerosene came in four-gallon drums Dad made into wire-handled buckets we used at the well, and for bailing out slippery suds from our laundry copper, hot water from Mum's weekly wash. I emptied my share in the galvanized tub brought down from the kitchen wall. Cold invaded where wall slabs had shrunk. so I set up my tub close by the fire, its logs already a crumbly red. I aligned tub handles with floorboard cracks, sat with my back to the door, surrended to the ember world as my bath water cooled. They thought it a privacy-modesty thing. It was much too hard to explain to them I couldn't share what I saw in the fire as I sat there wet and naked.
poetry index

Glory Box, circa 1940 my oldest sister never married men came by the farm hung about a while then went their way and her glory box filled with pretty things younger sisters married off-farm but through those breeding years she stayed mum's rock-of-gibraltar she must have sunk or dissolved like a sugar cube else they'd have found her floating in the dam where she taught me to swim	from her glory box they cleaned out every useable piece of satin, linen and lace those she'd let me stroke rub my cheek against while she named the one for whom she'd added each special thing the box is stored in the shed empty except when I get in to smell the perfume stroke the lid's camphor quickness remember that dress and say the names velvet damask organdy for her
poetry index

A two-man crosscut saw

For My Own Good, circa 1940 I still blame Rudyard Kipling's ‘If’ for setting the bar of manhood so far beyond my reach, for words and rhythms I couldn't recite to my father's satisfaction. Dad kept two cross-cut saws, the one with handles either end was meant for two men, or one man and the right boy. I knew to pay attention when he laid his cheek against the steel and checked the set of his saw then took to it with a bastard file sharpening teeth, bevelling edges. Over his muscled shoulder he carried his saw deep into the bush. The steel flexed and slewed as if it hated trees, or saplings like me. Mark lengths of log to fit our stove. Start brushing through the bark. Long even strokes, pull don't push. Let the saw blade do the work. Stay–in–line. In–line! Three lines of blood-red sawdust, three blocks of red gum on the ground, then smoko time and well-worked tales of a dead brother's feats – Uncle Charlie as light horse trooper, farmer, woodsman… That’s when I’d know, the next block was It. Pull-pull tempo lifting, lifting... Listen to the sawblade sing, he’s watching me as I sweat and swing, listen to the blue steel ring. When the stroke exceeds a schoolboy's reach I let go. Just... let it go. Autumn twilight settles on the bush, Kipling, Uncle Charlie, Dad and me.
poetry index

Somewhere to come from, circa 1940 Bus late again. Fred's at the wheel, I guess. The gravel driveway snakes back to house and bails, like a giant python. I lean on the gate. Almost free. C’mon bus, c’mon, transport me from country cloister to electric city, tomorrow-now is waiting. Let me fly, unfettered by seasons, never slowing to nature's rhythms. Thank God they're milking or they'd see me off. Pathetic, how they’re defined by pain and labour and uncertainty. She slipped me a bible; He, fifty bucks – in my sock, in case, he said. For that and the will to fight, thank you both. Goodbye green prison, Perhaps one day I'll visit – later, if, when ... for fallowing between campaigns. But my roots? font? identity? Crap! Just ... somewhere to come from. On board at last. No rear windows in buses these days. Modern times, hey?
poetry index

Count Your Blessings, circa 1940 Tom, count your blessings, name them one by one, Was Mum's pathetic plea to me her only son. I couldn’t live like them, those years of hanging on With heart attacks and broken backs, the farm as good as gone. For them the bush was home, to me an irksome rut, Each day the wander lust was gnawing at my gut. "What d’you want?" they asked. I told them, "Everything, And now before I'm dead from years of dairying." Dad promised me the farm, said I'd become the boss, He couldn't understand to me that was a cross. My Sis just up and left without a lot of strife, But if you're born a son the sentence runs for life. I fled to Sydney's Cross and now I work the Wall, I troll the crowd for guys who’re out to have a ball. I think I'm getting Aids, I've never felt this sick, My stomach aches with cramp, I'm screaming for a fix. Here comes the Salvo guy, I wish he'd take my hand And sing redemption songs to help me understand; Tom, count your blessings, name them one by one, Tom, count your blessings, see what God has done.
poetry index

Home Delivery, circa 1940

Herb Lamb, my Pop, came from South Australia
via the mines of Broken Hill
but the women who girdled his life wouldn't abide
too much talk of that or Pop's bare-knuckle fighting
lest God and I got to hear of it.

Against the odds they'd laid round town
salvation Grandma got him Right with God,
and none too soon for it seems...
but let's not talk about that,
God's out there listening still.

Pop delivered for God and Mallam's Store.
He stood up, stood up for Jesus
in the tray of their grocery cart –
Salvation soldier,
upright as the Cross,
balanced by a fingertip of rein,
tapes of his flannel long-johns tied around his braces.
He sang God's praise to horse and town,
both loved him for his Joy
and honest delivery of songs and their groceries.

Mallam's kept their horses in a Stuart Street barn
(the place became Mitre 10)
It reeked of leather, grain, and horse piss,
home to a lumpy old carpet snake.

When he'd done unhitching and hung up the tack
he'd spit on his palms, put up his dukes
and we'd go a few rounds in the dust,
testing our straight-left, right-cross combos.
We'd end with our pledge:
not a word to the womenfolk.

Pop carried the Salvo banner so high
no-one could hardly miss it.
His Amens reached deep as China,
and thunderbolt Halleluyahs scared
the devil out of Brunswick Valley.
In the pub they bought his War Cry,
got a handshake and a Bless You Brother,
and the gift of knowing anything's possible.

I wonder how he got on in heaven
you know,
Pop freshly dead but checking Him out
to see if He measured up
to what Grandma had said.

Mullumbimby, Circa 1940

Herb (Pop) Lamb & family

Herb (Pop) Lamb of Stuart Street

The original Mallam's store

Burringbar Street, Mullumbimby, circa 1930

Cnr Burringbar and Stuart Sts
Pop Lamb in his cart, bottom-left

poetry index

A. Olive and Sons, butchers of Stuart Street

(in Stuart Street)

The Village Butcher, Circa 1940

In Olive’s butcher shop, matrons clasp
their string bags to tummies sucked in
under floral frocks,
watch the butcher — slightly wicked,
he has a quick lip, a flirting eye,
can make dead flesh come alive.

His cleaver hits, the skull splits,
meaty fists tear it in half,
two fingers scoop the good grey stuff
plopping from each hemisphere.

The butcher presents for my approval
pink-veined brains on greased paper
(customers snicker but I don't flinch)
then double-wraps it in the dailies.

And a pound of cutlets, please sir, I says.
He chucks the sheep's head into a bucket,
loose offal drops to the sawdust floor.
He lifts me up so I stand on a block,
(one of three, like in Ashton’s circus)
and I begin to sing:
Stand up, stand up for Jesus
Ye soldiers of the cross…

From the running rail he unhooks
an undressed carcass of flesh and bone,
drops it to straddle a spare block
like a hurdling beast in flight.
Lift high His royal banner,
It must not suffer loss.

Knives clunk in his leather scabbard,
he whips one down his rasping steel
then cuts, cuts, cuts like a madman.
Build on the Rock, the Rock that ever stands,
Build on the Rock, and not upon the sand.

Customers watch him but listen to me
as I finish the last of my Sunday School songs.
While slapping wrapping round the chops
the butcher asks our audience: Well,
what do you think? Has young Jack
earned some bones for his dog?

poetry index

Venn Bros, plumbers & tinsmiths

The Village Plumber, circa 1940

Bluey Martin uses his snakes and stillsons
to fix things. Doesn't consult, just
gets the job done, knows where he fits in
and lives by a credo of gold:
It's in The Plumber's Code.

Blowtorch burns and blue gunk
badge his overalls. His footy team beany
has shed threads under most of our floors.
Bluey locks the scrum for Mullumbimby Giants.

Drinking mates at the Middle Pub
pull his leg about house calls and plumbers'
friends and wrenches, vices and dirty traps.
Bluey's smile is slow as molasses. He says
another beer would go down well.

These days, hobby farms belittle our valley
and the newly countrified have five-toilet homes.
But spivs from Collins St, surgeons from Macquarie,
all book ahead for Bluey's services.

As stranger displaces neighbour, our ties fray
and the village might drift apart
but for the grid of pipes Bluey's installed
to connect us to each other and the earth.

poetry index

Redacliff Bros, Blacksmiths and Wheelwrights

in Dalley Street, Mullumbimby

The Village Blacksmith, circa 1940

Rough-trimmed tree trunks sunk in earth
prop an iron roof freckled with nail holes.
Dust motes ride the sun-shafts up and away.

A thousand horseshoes and harness chains
hang like wasted prisoners, on vertical slab walls.
The smell is charcoal, earth, leather, horse.

A Vulcan, his face flamed by fire, pumps
a charcoal forge to hellish red. It bellows, hungry
for metal, or the flesh of wayward village boys.

Hear him fashion sermons as his heavy hammer
beats the devil from that thing held in long tongs.
Hear the metal confess in a quenching bucket.

For God-fearing kids, he defines purgatory, awe.
A three-pub town with two smithies, one the mayor,
to endow our town with wheel, lever, plough.

His thanngg disciplines axes, straightens axles,
stiffens our town, then flies into outer space.
A smithy's blow once struck can't be undone.

Muffled neigh from the draught horse with foot
pinned in Smithy's leather lap, nails protruding
from its hoof. It gets a rasp and pincer pedicure.

At the doorway chain, kids watch for animal fear
hoping to share in it. Disappointed they look back
to the iron anvil, the altar for Smithy's dark arts.

poetry index

Village Keepers, circa 1940

A cow-couchant guards the ground
at Billinudgel's Dung Oval.

This cool jersey of the last defence
chews cud, dribbles, nods,
watches spring grass shoot,
her belly holding the ground where
the Visitors' shot-to-win was blocked
by Jacko's save on the siren.

They carried the shield around here
spewed champagne about
mopped up adulation, then signed on
for the cricket season.

Behind each shooting star,
in the backfield of their lives
where lights are forty watts and
the only sure laugh is canned,
mothers, fathers, lovers
brace themselves for penalty shots
– bills, droughts, bad breaks.

Five-eight's Mum, Goalie's Dad,
Full Forward's Girl – laurels enough
for those minders of goals.

Volunteers roll the cricket pitch,
gather cow pats for strawberry beds
while the bovine keeper, now in slips,
ruminates on the interregnum
and winter wicket keepers.

poetry index

A Greek Cafe

The Greek Café, circa 1940

To distract Maria from her lament
about being Greek in a country town
we ask about her Heroic Lover.
She gives a bosom-shaking shrug
and glares across at her Papa
hand-washing the heavy china.

Fortressed inside a hippie gown
Miss Crystal flip-flops an entrance,
sprinkles some Mona Lisa about,
decides which table to grace,
finally fluffs and settles
like a Rhode Island Red. Miss Crystal
sips herbal tea, lets distance fill her eyes
– Aquarius was many moons ago –
twists rings recessed in her dolly fingers,
jiggles teardrop earrings, healing crystals,
and sighs, her décolletage endlessly deep.
Did a youngerman leave her here
while he chased fresher rainbows?
If music and mood are right she'll sing
somebody-done-me-wrong songs
straining the words through a veil of hair
brushed straight and tragically long.

A rusty fan pesters the humid air,
lays more history on the ceiling.

At six bells the Cap'n drops anchor
in the corner booth where his eyes
re-water with spume from Spicy Isles
while his body remains to meter
Paragon hours in short blacks.
Embossed veins on parchment skin
map a route through liver-spot islands.
Secure on his poop-deck bench he rolls
his own, one-handed. Those fists were forged
to haul sheets, reef sails, fight the helm
around The Horn in Hornblower winters.
One day I'll ask this castaway man
how he shipwrecked on our shores.
But then, perhaps I won't –
how much wonder would I trade
for a few domestic facts.

A truckie steps over the mongrel
asleep cross-pawed at the door.
Mixed grill with the works!
Papa flicks suds from his hands,
pushes through a doorway of beads
to fix it right away.

First cafe in Mullumbimby

poetry index

Railway gates, Billinudgel

Railway Crossing, circa 1940 from gates swung shut flakes of white paint flutter into bitumen puddles on his hut's verandah gatekeeper and his dog doze under summer's quilt shimmering rails run north-south as if to hold mountains and sea apart a freight train loiters at the station; old mates yarn, load cases... bananas going to try their luck in Sydney markets; cars honk at the gates
poetry index

Song of Grass Dying, circa 1940

He's my great-uncle so I'm allowed
to sit beside him while he strokes
the whetstone along his scythe,
a sound to set dogs howling.

Kneeling in the council park
deep in smell of summer grass,
Great-uncle Stuart gets lost in honing.

But soon he'll snap his red braces
start tai chi of scythe-thru-grass
beheading paspalum
to reclaim the public's park.

And I'll follow safely behind
holding his shirttail,
listening to slashed grass sigh
like our dog Rolly did
when it was dying.

poetry index

Brunswick Heads footbridge

Footbridge Brunswick Heads

This reach of piles and planks
spanning the Brunswick River,
links village to sea,
like an umbilical cord.

Once high road to challenge surf,
a track for straggling home
in sodden retreat, crotch full of sand.
Now, it's tether to boyhood dreams

of holding this defile –
Horatius and I, with helmet, shield
and thrusting sword, hurling back
hordes of Etruscans, the river
red with heathen blood. And I feared

all the world's wrongs would be righted
before I was given my sword.

poetry index

Go and get the whiting, circa 1940 Time to get the whiting, Jack Grandma would wake me, whispering so's not to disturb the tent-full of others. She'd hand me a slice of toast-n-dripping, three sea worms for bait, and she'd say: Go and get the whiting – enough for six, remember six, Jack. Holiday fishing in the Brunswick River was more certain than bread at the store. If weather and tide weren't right fish for breakfast just took longer. And what did I know about fishing? It was worms, line on a bottle, sugar-bag to hold the fish, wriggling wet and cold against my back. While her fuel stove crackled and my fillets in the iron pan sizzled I'd bask in Grandma's praise and the bounty of love and fishes in those days of go and get.
poetry index

Riverside Pine, Brunswick Heads

Look how her trunk tapers away
to a tossed head
stirring the clouds to porridge.

We share a curvature of spine,
a long sweeping isobar –
our measure of external pressures.
There's a bird's nest at C5.

See how scars and nodules log
her years of competition,
how spur limbs thrust and brace
against the sea wind's rub?

Winters have fanged her south side
as she struggled up,
arms outflung
in a spiral of green crucifixions.

Perhaps when I cross the river
I'll look back and fathom
the dignity of her age.

What drama there'll be in her dying,
how empty the play on her stage.

poetry index

A family picnic (the Venns)

The Picnic Blanket, circa 1940

We launch our blanket on a sea of grass,
claim forty square feet of prime mooring,
tactically sited for onshore breeze,
shade, toilets, and a shop that sells
boiling water for threepence a billy.

We clamber on board our ship of supply
and immediately from its magic hold
come sausages, tarts and cold watermelon
brought out by a crew strangely disposed
to horseplay with children. We float away.

Drifters hail us, share weather reports and news
from a shore we've forgotten, but few are invited
to come aboard, share our provisions.
And no matter what busyness Dad remembers
he can't leave, we've sailed too far for that.

When we make fast at sunset, Mother and I
dance the dance of shaking off crumbs,
folding our day into the plaid blanket.
Riding home in the back of the ute my thoughts
and dog's face are moulded by the slipstream.

poetry index

Phrenology Reading, circa 1940

Her fingers in my hair
are worms exploring contours
for mounds that privilege insight.

She lisps aahs of recognition
as she maps my skull,
divines character.
Each brain-bump confesses
its faculty.

Priests have yet to learn, she says,
neither spirit nor soul drives life,
all brain function is localised,
predisposed.

She has studied Franz Joseph Gall
of Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, cites
Goethe as fellow-believer. I counter
with sceptic Napoleon Bonaparte.
Her fingers go on squirming

confirming her apprehensions.
They find a special protuberance –
the root of my animal appetites?

poetry index

Euchre Night, circa 1940

It doesn't help to brood on loved ones passed away,
I know it's got you down, you think of her each day
And nothing's worse than cows to wear a body down,
It's bound to do you good, a night with me in town.
And if we celebrate and get a little tight
My lad'll drive us home and bed us overnight.

This Middle Pub's the go, you'll find they serve good grub,
We'll grab ourselves a feed then check the Service Club.
We'll have to eat and run to get a euchre seat,
They get a bumper crowd, it's where the locals meet.
And if our luck runs hot, like toffs we'll shout the bar,
We're bound to strike some mates to share a yarn and jar.

It's just five bob for steak, just ask, they'll cook it rare,
Two veggies served with mash, the price is more than fair.
Here take a number block, it tells them who gets what;
Now where'd you like to sit? They're all a friendly lot.
Old Fred there's chosen soup, he doesn't trust his teeth,
He needs that grippy stuff, old folks put underneath.

I hear our footy club has signed a brand new lock —
That burley Salter boy; it sure would cause a shock
If Salter turned out trumps and we beat the Byron mob;
The way they win each year, the league should take a swab
Of players they recruit; it might be simply class
Or do they train their boys on special kinds of grass.

Fay Dunn just waved to us, by gee she's held up great,
You'd never know from looks, the Big C's got her mate.
It's now inside his bones, I'll miss the funny coot.
I mind he once caught crabs inside a Blucher boot,
And if he snagged a rock you'd swear he'd hooked a whale;
Don't let his rods go cheap when they're put up for sale.

Aint fate a funny thing, a man can't run or fight,
Well, here's to Lady Luck and winning cards tonight.

poetry index

Boy with dog, circa 1940

The word whips through Mullum, empties Mallam's store.
In Burringbar Street the pub yardman leans on his broom
Rising from her midday nap, the gate lady gapes and asks what's up.
The sawmiller stills his docking saw, word is passed round, "Come'n see
there's this boy, about thirteen, dragging his dog through town."

The dog is lying on a bag – a hessian sled, pulled by a gangly boy
who shuffles backwards, crouching low, so the dog won't tumble off.
Mid-summer shimmer, shaded eyes, reluctant nodding heads:
ah, yes, its chest is still, the dog is dead and the boy is crying-blind,
he's hauling it into Argyle Street, scraping a trail in the gravel.

A woman fills a tin mug, cool well water, starts towards the boy
but props when her husband growls: "For Christ's sake let the lad be."
The world slows as the boy stops, kneels, repositions the dog,
picks ants from blood in its ear, transfers his rag hat to its head.
Fifty yards ahead a lady waves her hanky to keep the traffic clear.

A truck goes rumbling by – wash of relief – then it's back to the boy
dragging his dog, plowing the haze, brushing off flies with a twig.
Bag rasps on grit, watchers flinch but all hold their ground.
A baby cries. A dog is called to heel. Waiting for the boy...
to drag his dog past the last house and release the town.

poetry index

Down to the Sea

Within Mount Warning's oversight
stuck like a crumb on its caldera lip
old Chincogan is less a mountain
than leading hump of a camel.

At its feet our Mullumbimby
slumbers in a mud-blind coil
of the Brunswick River
slithering flatlands to the sea.

The width of Valley streets was set
by the swing of an oxen span
hauling cedar to float downriver
to insatiable lumber ships.

Like rough-shaven bristly chins,
clear-felled hills steadily bled
their topsoil to river to sea –
everything's down to the sea.

Trains no longer run
yet enlightened drifters like me
find their way here, wait their turn
to leach down to the sea.

approach to Mullumbimby and Mt Chincogan from the east

approaching Mullumbimby from the east;
Mt Chincogan in background

Mullumbimby town centre, circa 1930

Burringbar Street, circa 2005

poetry index

Max Ryan

Village Poet Max is a poet. I know because he savours yellow, smells the sky, scoops happiness out of honey, nails music, won't say soul, and he owns the town’s worst beret. He idles his days at New Brighton picking poetry out of sea breezes and suffers a limp that slows him so he knows the sugar ants’ ways. When Max visits me my dictionary twitches about on its shelf but Max picks and sorts with his ears, his infallible seashell filters. Max once howled with Ginsberg, sipped syruptea in Nepal, has lived in villages where they employ professional writers of words. We mainly manage our own, but it's nice to know that if love, or other odd things need speaking about, we've got this poet who minds our village well of words.
poetry index

Tyagarah Wreckers - a valley fable The day they failed to lock Their ten-foot steel-mesh fence, Forgot to unchain the mastiffs, That’s when the wrecks escaped. Yellow school bus waddled, led Mechanised dead past slobbering dogs, Out through the gaping gates In a rollicking carcass parade: Builder's ute, missing its tray Where once blue heeler ruled, And hot-rods spinning wire wheels Scattered rocks down the road. Cannibalised and dragging Entrails of wires and tubes, They flapped, scraped and clanked Their riot to old Mullum town. Good citizens left warm beds and cots, Pulled on their best dressing gowns, Gathered along Burringbar Street And gaped at the crude cavalcade. Without any warning the doddering old Discarded wheelchairs amd walking frames, To hitch a ride in the wild hippy coach, And children broke from guardian's flanks To join in the magic, ride the school bus Or dance along with the wonderful wrecks While banker, builder, wheeler and dealer Stood on the footpath and wept.
poetry index

Accounting

I should be taking stock
of business done today, not
watching valleys fill with violet,
clouds and mountains merge,
swallows cleanse the twilight,
day depreciate away.

Prodigal sun has spent its gold
and this is the settling hour when
cicadas end their self-promotion,
lorikeet mates accommodate,
bats fly out to harvest night.

This writing-off of another day
makes private business petty pence,
exchange rates piffling. I know,
on the far side of this interlude,
I’ll once more rule the ledger,
carry forward unaccounted things
as tomorrow's trust.

But here and now that hoop pine,
in silhouette on a blurring sky,
totally possesses me.

poetry index

farmyard cocktails

all mouths tits defining flanks and restless tails
this cocktail crowd enfolding the joneses they
bounce from hello off hi to how are yooo he
senses the random molecular motion which dumps them
spinning their social wheels alone on the fringe she
frets until they remesh and pinball through to a side wall

from there it's clear the herd's a fractal pattern
of seething sub-circles all properly self-similar
each ring of tails proscribing otherness he
notes internal heat triggers convection currents which drive
some to the edge to cool before they drop back in she
has an eye for particulars is restless and fidgets

newcomers swell the herd and all is dense flux
critical closeness of members sweat
evaporates from hides to cloud against the ceiling his
nose differentiates boiled cabbage from testosterone
and other strange attractors she
leaves his side to cleave into the chaos
on a passage far from random he
jiggles their keys in his pocket
watches her present herself

poetry index

Illawarra Flame Tree

Bush Flame

There! See?
Naked tapered torso,
Mottled arms thrust skywards,
Spread fingers sprouting flash red nails.

Illawarra Flame in flower... I see you there!

Droplets of dew
Backlit by the morning sun
Are jewels to tease the scribbly gum.
Poser! Thai dancer! Scarlet-haired Dellila!
Theatrical coquette, stealing scenes on my bush stage.
But soon your splendor sates and my eyes seek gentler hues.

And this morning first blood blossoms on the ground,
Stage manager enters left, his cruel clock ticking,
Calls the costume change to homely green.
Curtain down! But next November,
Wherever I make my camp,
Seduce me again.

poetry index


Beach Triptych
dawn gold escaping a breach in the world that miracle again molten sun drips back into blackness the far side dawn inquisition light's slow suffusion of a stirred world middle ground monochrome surfers sign with stick arms a shearwater shoots the wave trough its cutting cry the boardrider's dog among tossed seaweed morning tideline	noon sloth doses the needlework shade of sheoaks friarbirds the fringe of beach banksia full of gossip drowning light shadowless footprints stipple the sand embryonic ocean someone's body floats in its sea-hole a curved world without one honest line unbidden breakers pacific ocean as giant baptismal font global warming	dusk rock shadows moonscape the beach a defaced world a wave repaints sunset on wet sand bird hieroglyphs light draining out of the seascape a fingernail moon wave fluorescence lust for land confessed in stage whispers a tunnel through the bitou bush village lights sea quenches a chain lightning strike the sky reseals
poetry index

Wilsons Creek

Gaia

The corporate world had leached all joy from life
When Gaia found and prized me from its race,
Secured me from my own and brother's knife;
Within her wilderness she taught me grace.
She helped me down from cruel ambition's cross,
The stake impaling all my closest kin,
Where each success was further proof of loss
And winning was the most I stood to win.
I whined about the greedy corporate states,
And dreams forgone, my every petty ill.
But when She spoke it was of all our fates,
New ozone holes, the planet warming still.
Above our heads the forest giants held sway,
Below, the office blocks seemed toys for play.

poetry index

Backpackers

Like other bundles that tumble
off interstate buses, Anna & Lars
cast about for terminal spoor then
like hermit crabs reclaiming shells
they scuttle away to hostels.

Next morning's communal breakfast
is Thai stir & German sausage,
wet towels & drying cozzies,
Somebody's taken my spoon,
eddies of half-naked bodies,
a supermarket in grins,
the simmer of language soup.

Anna plunges with Nordic vigour
into Byron's bodysoul world
of psychics, readers & healers,
geomancy & craniosacral balancing.
She samples the modish therapies:
astro & dance, hypno & osteo.

Lars, true son to Aurvandil the Bold,
swops snow skis for surf board,
the slopes of Göl for Pacific rollers,
rides wild on shock-absorber legs –
the same flirtation with failure.

Anna, child of a Volva seeress,
tries Tantra, & Reiki, Satori & Shiatsu,
returns to Lars re-energised,
disappointed he can't see
she's rebalanced & reborn.

They scuba Julian Rocks, get hooked
by an underworld of improbable fish,
and pledge they'll pick avocados,
custard apples, whatever, to pay
for a dive on the Great Barrier Reef.

Whale-watchers fringe Cape Byron
but Anna & Lars laze like lizards,
watch iridescent hang-gliders swarm
like moths around the lighthouse.
Landed, flyers are travellers returned
and wear born-again grins.

Anna packs her crystal acquisitions:
Tiger Eye to soften Lar's stubbornness,
Soothing Amethyst for crowded buses,
Orange Calcite to remember his birthday,
Leopardskin Jasper to ensure fertility,
Rose Quartz for unconditional love.

In Myocum orchards they collect
nectarines, a rash of insect bites &
a nest egg for their Queensland leg
then drift away under backpacks –
September was Byron Bay &
their packs are stuffed with tomorrows.

poetry index

Mail Order Bride

He traces its tail to her pubic hair,
and knowing what must be done,
hand over hand he hauls
the snake tattoo off his love.
It comes away easily, almost wilfully,
with one long sibilant swish.

She smiles to ease his qualms, says
the shedding is her betrothal gift,
winces when the head breaks free
leaving two red drops on her breast.
He wraps the coils of twitching skin
in the saris she's forsworn,
dumps the lot in a garbage bin.

He kisses her unsullied skin,
says even his bigoted family
will find no fault with her now.
They make love with the lights on –
rock, writhe to rhythms
no sitar could accompany.

When their daybreak comes
physicians sever his enfolding arms,
dislocate her pelvis, to separate them
for separate families' separate funerals.
Priests ponder her beatific smile but
neither prayer nor dissection discloses
why their shared tattoo grows more distinct
while their rigor mortis comes and goes.

poetry index

Seawall, Brunswick Heads

The Tribe

Benny crowds between Dad and Pop,
adds his legs to their seawall dangle,
waits for the stories to start,
and autumn evening breeze
to cool the fish-n-chips.

Pop rubs his bristled chin, recalls
he's caught millions of bream at this spot.
Things sure change he says, like
they split the atom and went to the moon
yet nobody knows what's right from wrong.
Benny grins, rats a chip from the parcel end.

Pop lets out steam,
replaces the parcel in Benny's lap
where everyone can reach.
Dad frets that changes come too fast,
worries communities fall apart,
breaks off a chunk of flake.
Pop throws chips to the gulls, says
God and everythin's up for grabs,
nothin's the same no more, and
these cold rocks are no good for piles.

Three silhouettes edging the world.
The tang of fish-n-chips.

poetry index

Fishing Partners

crossing the bar

Bill
The pattern, power, set of waves at sea,
sad shrill of wind and shrieking cry of birds,
in tang of salt on tongue, through mystery,
Bill's world works, other than by words.

The living deck is drumming to his feet,
the wheel's alive and quickening his hand,
a straining engine's growl, the sting of sleet;
this whirl of senses Bill can understand.

But Bronwyn fathoms life by what is said,
she needs to hear a thing before it's real,
as words dry up so Bronwyn learns to dread
the sea which makes her Bill seem hard as steel.

His fishing hands are scarred by net and line,
they chafe across her trembling coddled skin,
his awkward lips, split deep by sun and brine,
cannot express the love entrapped within.

South Wall Brunswick Heads

Bronwyn
The Brunswick wall is where she goes to wait
on stormy days when fishing boats run late;
a vigil kept beside the ocean tomb,
a losing fight against her sense of doom.

When home alone she waits her life away,
confronts a fear that stalks her every day,
what hope has she against the siren sea
whose song can reach to house or harbour lee.

She dreams about another kind of life
in which she lives as ordinary wife
to banking man, a father, gentle, bland,
or farmer boy whose feet are safe on land.

A role of cozy bliss? A tempting part,
but head is serf before a hostage heart;
she shakes herself to break the reverie,
turns back to look for lights far out to sea.

poetry index

Palmwoods

(beyond Main Arm, below Koonyum Range)

The Antbed Court

Some say that I'm a bludger cos I spend most every day
in riding waves and squandering my time at Byron Bay
I've never lodged a tax return or owned a bank account,
I'm bred for love and leisuring and work's not paramount,
I winter up Main Arm with kin, the kindly Palmwoods clan,
spend time with boyhood mate, Sam Cheng, a top banana man.

Last year when Spring had itched my feet I packed up all my gear
Sam Cheng came round to say goodbye and we had cracked a beer.
"Another bumper crop," I toast, "your future's looking grand."
He seemed upset, I bit my tongue and let my pal expand,
"Nu. Heeh. I tell you Jack my friend, I feel I not belong,
I not a white Australien, my English sound all wrong?

I hold Chinese in deep respect, I'd not apologize,
or tell my troubled Asian friend some ego-soothing lies,
instead I offered Sam a tip, a ploy to smooth his way:
"Install a tennis court," I said. "Invite folk round to play."
"But Jack, I not knowing tennising, I not the playful sort."
"But that's the whole idea old mate, you let them win at sport."

"Choi Oi!" he cried, "I've made best farm and put them in disgrace,
so now is best I do right thing to let them save their face.
You right, I build a concrete court and put in light for night!"
"Now let's not get too flash," I said, "it has to look just right,
traditional and not too dear - just plain antbed will do."
"You Aussies you so sensitive, but Jack, I trusting you."

I holidayed in Sydney town and soon went through my pay,
I wooed the girls in Ballina and surfed at Byron Bay.
When autumn came around again I sought my Palmwoods nest
I meant to do some fallowing and check on Sam Cheng's quest.
I passed an antbed tennis court as I approached his door,
but I was taken back by Sam's, "You much to answer for!"

The welcome friendly smile was gone, no invite in for tea,
his finger pointed out the court then turned to wag at me,
"For truth, that dead ant thing you choose, it quickly make me poor,
my lazy sons they all turn bad, no work on farm no more,
when pretty girls come here to play and do the antbed prance,
my boys have heads in clouds, or frilly underpants."

His face was blank, inscrutable, I played a dead straight bat:
"Well what about the folk from town, did tennis help with that?"
"Ah that was big catastrophe, they nearly drive me wild,
they come with all their relative and bring along much child,
they climbing my banana trees and eating half my crop,
they crashing on my tramway line, I no can make them stop.

"The Nudgel folk they come to play but bring with them a keg,
before the sun is going down, they drink up every dreg,
much fistifights and bloody nose before I get them tame,
you guess which Oriental man is getting all the blame.
And tax inspector checking books, refusing all expense,
he no can understand how farm might need a twelve-foot fence.

"I learn to play and use two hands for chop and slice the balls,
they call me sissy sheila name and make the loud catcalls.
Then Missus Gallibrachio who last year had two twin,
she wear a naughty mini skirt, all husbands stare at skin,
it like an open powder keg and some wife throw the spark:
Go get a proper dress, you tart, we no want see birthmark!"

Hã Hã. But immigration man bring news that's very best.
He say this China man no need to do dictation test. ?

poetry index

Dalley Street, Mullumbimby

The town is pregnant and sagging
as afternoon storms build up.
A telephone man squats in a pit,
stews in his sauna, watches
her swollen ankles skirt
the root-buckled road.

Blue blurs stir on deep verandahs,
fish-flash of a turning face,
shadow bends to flowerbox.
Kitchen curtains are purdah screens
for unanchored eyes of folks
who own the sporting dogs
that savaged her children's cat
now mewling in her arms.

And who, asks a village matron,
is minding her hippy kids
while she traipses down to the vet's,
dapple-dipping under the palms
planted to shade town pioneers and
owners of pig dogs and pick-ups.

poetry index

Coolamon Villa
Coolamon Villa, Mullumbimby

Aged Care Facility, Mullumbimby

Coolamon Care

She insists on being wheeled
through reception
then round the back
to blossom-strewn shade
of a domed poinciana.

Left there, she squints up
at the flaunt of green raiment
flecked with orange flowers
and delft-blue chinks of sky.

From a ward window
her carer watches
for first signs of drooping.

When fetched
blossoms adorn her hair
line her lap – she picks them off
with shaky fingers,

smiling, tells the duty nurse
the tree is teaching her
how to die with grace.

poetry index

In case of bad luck

Must be good to be a baby
in a family with love to spare
for a three-legged dog.

A family with money for vets,
with love not measured by
dog design or utility.

A mother to wheel your pram
daily through Brunswick Heads
to push you on the swing.

Must be good to have the town’s
only three-legged dog trotting
in 3-4 time beside your pram,

To know your dog gets sniffed
same as the others, and to remember
all of this, in case of bad luck.

poetry index

Anzac Child

What are those children doing here?
Do they have dead to mourn?
Have they come to toy with fear?
To supplicate and fawn?

Hear bugle calls, see campaign scrolls;
may we join in those games?
Come read the marbled honour rolls;
those must be heroes' names.

Watch scouts and guides in toddling ranks
form threes and wheel about.
Troops face the front! Dress by the flanks!
Who shouts such orders out?

Entranced by pomp and war's romance
each lays a yellow wreath
with downcast head in servile stance
novitiates beneath

the warrior gilt by morning light
who aches to make them hear
his tale of children led to fight
before they'd learnt to fear.

He died in vain if innocents
adopt this martial place
to bow their heads in reverence,
seduced by war's embrace.

poetry index

Tomato Sandwich

Weatherworn bluffs
expose old mountains –
rude exhibits
in the eastern gallery
of the Great Dividing Range

stretching down the coast
like a sun-drenched lizard,
counterpoise to the Pacific
massed on the other side
of our littoral.

How patiently
that mighty sea waits
by its serpentine strip
of sand, ground down, detritus
of upthrusts and volcanoes.

So this is me, sandwiched
in Paradise between sea and scarp,
swigging down a mug of tea
before I pick up the hoe,
sow more tomato seeds.

poetry index

Caravans & Whales

When autumn chill reaches southern bones
caravans and whales start heading north,
all those not footy freaks or hibernating
migrate toward our warmer lattitude –
caravans and whales in littoral balance,
convoys and pods of beasts abreast.

Sun obliquely eyes these barging hulks,
relentless in their scavenging for warmth,
like hords of locusts feeding by degrees
they go swarming ever northward after heat.
Vans settle into parks like nesting chooks,
whales wallow down in balmy breeding seas.
To locals they're like meters of the seasons
and welcomed as the fruitful tourist rain,
until we wave these migrants home again.

poetry index

Pig Dog Happy Hour

On-the-job Pig Dog
stores the sun's heat
in drum-tight skin,

guards Gas Cylinder,
coiled copper, plastic pipe,
all the tubs of blue gunk

within his fiefdom
of Truck Tray, plus the extra bit
his stubby neck can reach.

Happy Hour –
boozy chat wraps him
like a comforter quilt

for skin-shiver dreams
about fangs sunk to gums
in any other dog.

Lifts a leaden eyelid –
yes, Plumber's stick legs
still planted in Boots

among Mates' boots
defining the cultural hub
of the village.

Going home, pig dog
gets to ride up front, howl
to His love songs.

And if She says no tonight
Boots'll share the bad luck round,
and that's only fair.

poetry index

Rainforest Remnant

With easy laughter, they enter
a forest of overarching crowns,
eager to affirm
their unity with wilderness,
to validate
their green credentials.

One hour in – stillness, silence,
no other animal moves,
leaves do not rustle. A baffle
of trees and absorbent mulch
deaden footfalls, no cadence
to meter time. Talk dies
like a guttering candle. They see
no further than the sixth tree trunk.

Two hours in – the track peters out.
Eyes down, no longer holding hands,
they clamber over buttress roots,
in single file. They are beetles on the floor
of a monstrous temple.

Three hours. They sit on a rotting log
within a shrinking cage of tree trunks.
Boots in leaf litter. Not even a leech.
Somebody's hollow voice,
Not supposed to be like this.
Faces float
in fungus fluorescence.

poetry index

Mullumbimby Ladies

The women have that look about them.
Any might be my aunty or niece
jauntily jeaned, or loosely wrapped
in prints and patterns that hide
occasional dirt of the town.

They and their blokes are seasoned,
tempered by timber that's all cut out,
by bananas lost to bunchy top,
dairies to the Common Market.

On-the-land is their state of mind
and their proper dogs would work
if work remained to be done.

Wars came and went but hippies stayed
so the Ladies absorbed and joined them,
in the great accommodation.

As sheoaks bind the Brunswick's banks,
so the Ladies hold our villages safe.
Good mothers, lovers, lamington makers –
accolades enough?

Under rough bark of acne and angst
budding Ladies hang out, make out
on Burringbar Street – the new guard.
Ladies, if I were sent away to a war
you're the ones I'd want waiting.

poetry index

She-oaks, Torakina, Brunswick Heads[later]

Jack & the She-Oaks

Not much magic in she-oaks,
hardly the beanstalk one would choose
to climb from village to heaven,

more the rubbishy sort of tree
rutile-miners might plant to bind
wounds inflicted on sand dunes.

For Jack, they'd always been there
to climb, dry cozzies, be the wicket
for budding Bradmen, there as

rendezvous for family reunions,
as home in hide and seek with cousins,
backrest for Nan's after-lunch naps.

Conspirators in first couplings,
they tuned breezes, filtered the moon,
never told and when love struck

their needles sang spring; later
cauterised his heart. They anchored Jack
when he went to war.

In the slither of somebody else's jungle
trees ambushed dreamers in death games.
Their fat leaves were mute tongues.

His mind on home, foot found mine.
They sent him back to wattle and scorn,
and grafts for his truncated limbs.

Brown paper bags, flagons of shame,
pain until he regained the oaks – home,
safe from those who knew what he didn't.

Ibis, village dogs, a drift of children watch
Jack play the puppet on his riverside stage,
scabby old oaks as both cast and props.

When council men amputate limbs
of gangrenous oaks, he gathers fallen acorns,
hoards the seeds for a future war.

poetry index

A Meeting of Kite-Flyers

This kid in baggy camouflage pants stares through blue
designer sunnies at his eagle kite snagged on an overhead
line where it trails a broken wing and bites its own tail with
each stir of spring wind and so as an expression of kite-
flyer solidarity I go over to stand by his side and to
suggest recovery strategies but he says it only cost eight
bucks and leaves me there watching it twitch and snap.

A really old guy bent like a question mark and wearing
trousers held up by rope hobbles over spits calls me son
squints up then says he'll help get it down but he stinks
of plonk so I volunteer to stand on the rubbish bin while
he hugs my knees and I poke the kite with his walking
stick until it falls down and we exchange grins but when I
admit I can't fix its wing he stamps on the bird and snaps
its spine and says too far gone as he drops it head first
into the bin then shuffles away to the Brunswick pub.

poetry index

Park Swing, Brunswick Heads

I take his hand and say,
"Let's wait our turn."

The lady standing at the swing
seems unaware of sea wind
whipping her brown skirt,
pleating it with shadows.
The swing seat goes down,
away and up,
holds horizontal for a heartbeat;
she welcomes it back with a smile,
down away and back,
eyes fixed on yesterday,
down away and back.

"But it's empty," says my grandson.

Her smile dribbles away,
she blinks her eyes into focus,
hurries off down Fingal Street
leaving the swing to squeak
down away and back
in dying arcs.

poetry index

The Batman

On his walk around the oval
he goes anti to our clockwise,
wearing a fruit bat, sometimes two.

"This one's Alice. She come
to me with a busted wing" –
he notes my wife's approving

nod and thrusts his beer belly
forward. "You can touch
her if you want." I don't.

A lap later, as if we've never
met, "I'm the batman. Have
youse read about me. I run a bat

hospital. In me hut, over there,"
waving vaguely at the swamp.
I withdraw to fortress silence,

but my wife talks - sonar, diet,
habitat. Not rabies, of course.
A lap later he's spread its

membrane wing like a market
vendor displaying prize cloth.
I evade his gluey stare,

watch the creature re-wrap
itself, fold away its cliche.
"Five bats means five Chinese

blessings." Fox-face nuzzles
between his breasts. We vacate
the oval, awkward, silent.

poetry index

Brunswick Heads Revisited

Lick of light. Dawn's breath
takes shape in motel curtains.
My executive partner sleeps on,
her body now free of city twitches.
The smell of her sticks to me
as I pull on my wetsuit. It still fits.

Outside, in the dregs of night
I thread a village of boyhood memories,
a knight errant wielding waxed surfboard,
on a pilgrimage to the East.

Pines lance park's darkness.
A flutter of rags in branches –
kites still come here to die.
A boy with my face, bare feet on his dog,
watches me pass his bench.

Through bitou bush the track weaves
like the ocean’s umbilical cord, passes
under banksia silvered with spider webs.
Last dune – butterflies tease my stomach.

A gash of light splits sea from sky,
the horizon curves to embrace me.
Surfboarder silhouettes dot the sea.
Basalt rocks of the south wall
sink and rise in the swell.

I follow sandpiper tracks into waves
that wash the world from my feet,
welcome me with a blood-warm buoyancy.
I paddle out, become one with the pack
cradled on the world's belly.

A set of waves grows unbidden.
Slanting sun tints them lambent green and
suddenly one’s alive, particular and mine.
Go. Kick. Arms. Up. Got it? Oh, yes!
My legs remember.

Working the wave I read the world's braille
through my feet — cutaway — crest — drop off
— the little death in playful foam —
then my leg rope tugs me back again again.

I grind up the beach with trembling knees,
remember her and I'm itchy with guilt.
Behind me the sea heaves in its oily skin
and I realise there's nothing to resolve. Inland,
egrets rise from shadow into sunlight.

Wavelets slap the river bank, crab holes slurp in turn.
Motel's a mile away and the surfboard's growing heavy,
chafed crotch, runny nose, goosepimpled flesh.
She should be awake by now.

At the highway motel, early traffic drums south.
The sign on our door, "Do Not Disturb."
She lies as I left her. I roll off the wetsuit.
My skin is crinkled and salted.

poetry index