ONSHORE
Coastal sounds loosen, and the moon
is on a long shuddering run through cloud.
So much drift and drag in everything.
No point in waking you for this, you’re moored
in an inlet of sleep. Your days
veer in upon themselves and disappear.
You speak of half-remembered dreams, forgotten
fresh starts, the maze of endings. A damaged
oblivion keeps dissolving into dawn.
Tonight the wind has brought the ocean closer,
shepherding its dense roar inland.
Our garden’s crowded with the sound of breakers.
You yearn for weightlessness. I tell you
we’re dwelling in it. Beach mist climbs the dunes,
wanders the neighbourhood and settles in.
We live with spindrift stranded in the streets
and rumours of the sea in every room.
Time hardly knows it has us on its hands.
Coastal sounds loosen, and the moon
is on a long shuddering run through cloud.
So much drift and drag in everything.
No point in waking you for this, you’re moored
in an inlet of sleep. Your days
veer in upon themselves and disappear.
You speak of half-remembered dreams, forgotten
fresh starts, the maze of endings. A damaged
oblivion keeps dissolving into dawn.
Tonight the wind has brought the ocean closer,
shepherding its dense roar inland.
Our garden’s crowded with the sound of breakers.
You yearn for weightlessness. I tell you
we’re dwelling in it. Beach mist climbs the dunes,
wanders the neighbourhood and settles in.
We live with spindrift stranded in the streets
and rumours of the sea in every room.
Time hardly knows it has us on its hands.
CLIMATE CHANGE
is so huge
I mean the Garnaut Report
with its billion words
barely scratched the surface
showed us only the tip of the iceberg
(for those of you who may be reading this
in another century, icebergs
were enormous floating fragments of the famous
polar ice-caps), and my poem
was going to be a saga, a verse monster
the size of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica
(for those who may be reading this
in another century, this was a book
as big as an iceberg, packed with frozen knowledge)
but I thought about the carbon footprint
of all that print, every letter an ant’s breath
of greenhouse gas, and my laptop doing its bit
to heat up the world, not to mention the making
of the paper (what a hoofmark that would leave on the future)
so I stopped right here
is so huge
I mean the Garnaut Report
with its billion words
barely scratched the surface
showed us only the tip of the iceberg
(for those of you who may be reading this
in another century, icebergs
were enormous floating fragments of the famous
polar ice-caps), and my poem
was going to be a saga, a verse monster
the size of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica
(for those who may be reading this
in another century, this was a book
as big as an iceberg, packed with frozen knowledge)
but I thought about the carbon footprint
of all that print, every letter an ant’s breath
of greenhouse gas, and my laptop doing its bit
to heat up the world, not to mention the making
of the paper (what a hoofmark that would leave on the future)
so I stopped right here
JEALOUSY
1
The dunes are simmering.
Sand swarms across the beach at ankle height.
I tell you
it all remembers you.
This daybreak darkness,
the obsessive surf,
our old future.
If you have a promise to keep
be sure it isn’t broken first.
*
You came back from these corners of the sea,
these angles of land,
a born mermaid.
I tasted the salt on your lips,
peeled the scales from your shoulders.
Your sun-blasted innocence convinced me.
I should have seen
the night sky in your eyes.
I should have looked for moonburn.
*
The sea keeps beaching itself,
sliding big sentences up the slope
in a hissed scrawl.
It knows something.
It won’t stop
giving me its overlapping hints,
its sprawling news.
The oceanic script
sizzles and fades.
*
Tell me about that rogue summer,
you and your perfect stranger
making a home of this loose shore.
I want traces
of the pressure you put on each other,
signs of your settling in.
I am looking for what’s left
of the shadows of clothing,
the remains of your whispers.
2
Tell me
the story.
Lean on your elbow
and let me have it, your slanted narrative.
How everything
turned on almost nothing,
a beach cliché.
The white noise of ocean.
Then something about the bravery of strangers
losing themselves in each other’s lives.
How we take to betrayal.
I wonder if truth
is always like this,
the brand new thing that’s been happening for ever.
The flash of surf at night.
Being this close
while sleep threatens,
the decades intervene
and your story
wraps itself around me in the dark.
1
The dunes are simmering.
Sand swarms across the beach at ankle height.
I tell you
it all remembers you.
This daybreak darkness,
the obsessive surf,
our old future.
If you have a promise to keep
be sure it isn’t broken first.
*
You came back from these corners of the sea,
these angles of land,
a born mermaid.
I tasted the salt on your lips,
peeled the scales from your shoulders.
Your sun-blasted innocence convinced me.
I should have seen
the night sky in your eyes.
I should have looked for moonburn.
*
The sea keeps beaching itself,
sliding big sentences up the slope
in a hissed scrawl.
It knows something.
It won’t stop
giving me its overlapping hints,
its sprawling news.
The oceanic script
sizzles and fades.
*
Tell me about that rogue summer,
you and your perfect stranger
making a home of this loose shore.
I want traces
of the pressure you put on each other,
signs of your settling in.
I am looking for what’s left
of the shadows of clothing,
the remains of your whispers.
2
Tell me
the story.
Lean on your elbow
and let me have it, your slanted narrative.
How everything
turned on almost nothing,
a beach cliché.
The white noise of ocean.
Then something about the bravery of strangers
losing themselves in each other’s lives.
How we take to betrayal.
I wonder if truth
is always like this,
the brand new thing that’s been happening for ever.
The flash of surf at night.
Being this close
while sleep threatens,
the decades intervene
and your story
wraps itself around me in the dark.
INDIAN SUMMER
1
I wanted a wigwam
My Father Christmas father
found me one.
He pitched it at night,
pushing pegs
into the dark grass,
lacing the flap shut.
He made my dream tent
tight as a drum.
2
From inside,
the red stencilled chief
glowed on the calico.
He kept me company,
but I saw the gaps
holding him together.
The feathers he wore
were flames
staying away from him.
3
I loved the slant
of my father’s shadow
sloping over the walls
as he prowled around me.
He was my enemy tribe.
Caught,
he crept backwards,
his weightless shape
sliding off.
4
I didn’t come out.
He couldn’t fit in,
but he bent double
to talk treaties,
his face filling the entrance
upside down.
He spoke with a stern grunt.
He knew
the no smiling rule.
5
There were days
when the wind pulled
at my thin home
and I sat in a flapping
that loosened everything.
In winter, it lived
lightly under my bed,
a big rag
waiting for summer.
6
I think of that frail
shelter, the door
no one could knock on,
with the faded chief
and, I imagine,
the faint shape
of my father’s shadow.
All folded up
and put away for ever.
1
I wanted a wigwam
My Father Christmas father
found me one.
He pitched it at night,
pushing pegs
into the dark grass,
lacing the flap shut.
He made my dream tent
tight as a drum.
2
From inside,
the red stencilled chief
glowed on the calico.
He kept me company,
but I saw the gaps
holding him together.
The feathers he wore
were flames
staying away from him.
3
I loved the slant
of my father’s shadow
sloping over the walls
as he prowled around me.
He was my enemy tribe.
Caught,
he crept backwards,
his weightless shape
sliding off.
4
I didn’t come out.
He couldn’t fit in,
but he bent double
to talk treaties,
his face filling the entrance
upside down.
He spoke with a stern grunt.
He knew
the no smiling rule.
5
There were days
when the wind pulled
at my thin home
and I sat in a flapping
that loosened everything.
In winter, it lived
lightly under my bed,
a big rag
waiting for summer.
6
I think of that frail
shelter, the door
no one could knock on,
with the faded chief
and, I imagine,
the faint shape
of my father’s shadow.
All folded up
and put away for ever.
From The Mirror Hurlers (Puncher and Wattmann, 2019):
We manage a chilled kiss.
We have seen a whole river
let go, loosen
into lacy weightlessness,
shreds of its old self.
Now we stand
at its shuddering heart,
wrapped in a cannoning mist.
River atoms
fall all over us.
from ‘Finding the Falls’
These are spindrift words.
They hang back
from the main point.
They make the smallest possible impact.
They will come to nothing.
You can have them free of charge.
Feel their faint rain,
thoughts that fade as they hit you.
from ‘Buying Online’
We manage a chilled kiss.
We have seen a whole river
let go, loosen
into lacy weightlessness,
shreds of its old self.
Now we stand
at its shuddering heart,
wrapped in a cannoning mist.
River atoms
fall all over us.
from ‘Finding the Falls’
These are spindrift words.
They hang back
from the main point.
They make the smallest possible impact.
They will come to nothing.
You can have them free of charge.
Feel their faint rain,
thoughts that fade as they hit you.
from ‘Buying Online’