Blue Poles suite Jan 11th

6:30am

Not one screaming cicada! Allowing thornbills, wrens, scrub-wrens
and families of White-cheeked Honeyeaters to give concert
as honeyed scent tumbles from the canopy, bouquets
of Bloodwood lie scattered, broken by cockies,
yet a single flower is so rich, the scent.

The beach is carpeted by grains of sand the sea
has excavated, separated, rinsed and now toys with
along with some shells, a few Spirit Sticks of kelp
and one dead shearwater, the rest buried – and signs
of a key species, no plastic litter but tracks and form,
convention, a chunk of driftwood, clean cut, a smooth
rubber circle, almost, on this interface of leisure
with little to eat, the rock oysters burgled
just pigface and bush celery to chew on.

Dolphins surfing, a pod of ten or so
silhouetted in the smoky green glass,
at ease in that momentum never looking up,
the sky is very tall, its patina of cloud snowflake delicate.

5pm
Back through Jagun, the cicadas awake, but not
as loud as days back. The sea is so exciting,
viewed through banksia scrub at the end of the track.
our bodies surf lightly on the bubbles of a low tide spa,
waves crash on the sandbank,
beneath clear blue skies spilling.

Drying ourselves, Wyn holds her towel over her head
and lets the wind buffet it like a flag, makes me do the same,
‘look up” she says, but it’s not the same blue,
I think of a blond, Norma Jean Baker.

I hold Wyn’s hand, and remember waking earlier,
she asleep on the bed next to me, on her back,
breath the slightest snore and our hands clasped.