The weight of availability

Eos March 4

such space

the heart of things or rather

depth                                                     of

sky               sea         river

breath         rock       earth

night slowing retinal guesswork

clusters of trees, weight of availability.

Eos draws a thin red line

tracing the inner thighs,

prints monotypes on the torso.

Sometimes occult powers

distract you from presence,

seven billion humans somewhere else

allow space for reflection.

The river is steeped in crimson,

reminder of unmarked graves

and all the massacre sites,

a glorious colour bleed

feeding the churn of now

and my trigger finger.

The surface momentarily in balance

until the tide jockeys and the water

flexes insisting it’s alive not glass

and empties or fills the river’s instep,

the body is the reveal.

Watercolour clouds drift blisters of light

splintered by skittering fish

and leaps of faith, magnesium bright.

Helios is sluggish through cloud,

his smooth spectral content ripens

the estuary, but more than half

is in the infrared, wavelengths

the size of a pinhead seen by skin,

a millennia worth of angels.

A Striated Heron trots along the beach

the one doubling as a river bank,

stops, peers over its hunched reflection,

shuffles silhouettes. I can never

catch them bagging anything,

there’s an argument for surveillance.

Back home viewing my handiwork

with a casual flourish of the mouse

nine Black Swans appear flying south.