The odd warm winds keep up. The sea's
wrinkling with red weed. It weaves through the water
where slime hardens to stone. This jetty's
just frayed ropes and rotten planks, warty
with limpets now. Half sunk, a waterlogged
dory's choked up on a frayed tether.
The low sun turns distance to fogged
film, sky simmering. The weather's
so weird these past months. The sea
thickens nightly to a muscled slime, twitches
with the low flap of leather wings. At dawn, bees
swarm over drift-wood and drown. Smith's bitch
ate her litter. Nights I swat bugs, scan the heavens
for meanings. Old Ma Jones flicks cards. Paul
and the others drink. I'd leave, but Stevens
says there'll be work in the Fall.
I don't know why I feel so bruised.
Migratory birds flit like erratic needles.
Strange winds buffet their plumage.
They take off, and land again, confused.
from Esau's Children (1991)
Snorkelling - your vision's a lit globe,
head gone bobbing through a halo of light
that's warped by ribbed sand in the ripples' strobe.
From below, the sea's silver-backed, a bright
mirror you crashed through into a dumb
domain sound-tracked by creaking sea; the wheeze
of your breath's an accordian through the pipe,
a gullet whining in an offshore breeze.
Fish blips. Suddenly a glittering shoal
flashes telegraphic needles through dark weed
outcrops. They're storm clouds being seeded
by an aerial burst of silver foil.
White coral knuckles where the shelf sheers
down to depths packed with a shuffling fog
that confuses distance. Fish disappear
or torpedo out of the blue to goggle
you up close. Your mind hangs in water, but
obscure corners writhe with electric eels:
the punch of fists grinning teeth, cables cut
loose. You gulp back a water bolt. The sun reels.
Suddenly your mask fills with molten light
as you burst up. Stars explode in the spray.
The bit ripped out, you cough salt. The big day
surprises you kicking free from dreams, from night.
