Four Black Swans take me by surprise, printing a page
of mist, neither black or white or black and white,
grey, flowing north over rumpled sheets vaguely blue.
A Sooty Oystercatcher bill agape pipes music, black
on monochrome, darkness being slowly fed light.
The whale-backs of rocks were the real thing on Sunday.
Magpies take over the castle. One is carolling, muscular
birds, good in the fight. The sun is slow in this mist, a sky
the skin tone of a cadaver, a nostalgia wrapped in army blankets.
White stone offerings fit into the black Cliff, the white bouquets
and a miniature forest, of dark wooden trees skinned by the sea.
The tide lulls me into a false sense of security.
Swallows shooting out to sea, eventually recoil back to the cave.
I am down here to photograph the Flannel Flowers in full bloom,
ours have died, lasted a few years on the bank, but clay soil.
I wait and catch the rich glow of the sandstone and bunches
of flowers, can see the whites of their eyes.
And the green soccer balls the bandanas hold aloft.
No sign of Sunday’s Python or Goanna, but then they wouldn’t
be up so early, the heat not yet overflowing. I keep in mind
the golden scabs of recent falls that beautiful honey sandstone,
not yet disguised by vegetation. Climbing back up, light finally
ripens, and I’m stopped by discs of lichen playing colours
on a thin trunk with a green straps of Crinum Lily.
