shell grit that bites at their eyes:
‘put
ya sunnies on,’ she calls,
but
he paces away, down to the
beach, shades his winkers as he
dips a
hand
into the drift of the
salt and blue and he dips and
he dips,
the
water sliding through
his
fingers, slipping away back
to the
all,
the whole, pure blue,
and he lifts his gaze to the spine
of Dirk Hartog Island, stretched,
lying low, that rides the sea: Dirk
who ventured, steering for ports
of spice: pepper and cloves and
nutmeg, cinnamon: spices to heal,
and soothe, to season, to preserve,
to perfume the flesh that wastes:
but here no spice, only that bald sea
and its air
of
dimethyl sulphide,
and he sniffs, rubs his nose, sucks
at the thick smell, rinses his feet
in the lucid water, steps his way
back to the park squinting at the
light that cuts from the shell grit,
he squints, blinks, stumbles on a
beaming can, Bundy and Cola,
kicks it, kicks it to hell and gone:
‘ya wouldn’t listen: ya never
want to know, do ya?’ she chirps
as he bums onto a chair in the
shadow
of the van: ‘sunnies don’t
help when it’s bad,’ he mutters
and he closes his eyes and soon
his eyelids flicker as he tacks
through visions, doings, a world
streaming, of sails in full hazard,
of fragrant buds, of aromatic bark
and sweet-oiled leaves, as the
water of the sea steeps from azure
to denim to cobalt, deeper, darker
it grows as the sun sweats west
and the white vans, docked,
berthed, stayed, shimmer in the
heat, fierce light, carapaces
of the road that hulk on the small
shells, white, packed tight, of
long-gone voyagers, shells too
white to face, too white to doubt