we who lie under doonas, who lie in sleeping bags,
who lie in swags at the edge of land under the black of above as it
sings of all and nothing,
as it sings the
earliest song,
sings of
the first and the last, singing to us, calling us to remember and not
to forget:
we who lie flung between ground and sky, hemmed in between jaws that
grip,
left (in the words of André
Malraux’s Walter) ‘between the profusion of the earth and
the galaxies of the stars’,
the blue stars, the white stars, the yellow, red and double and
multiple,
clustering,
that surge and fizz and burn, they burn, burn in the black as it sings,
stars whose magnetic hearts throb as they suck and grab, as they tug,
as they reach
to take, clutch,
stars that jump out at us as we lie, calling us to mind, calling us to
remember, calling us not to forget:
we who lie in the wind from the sea that blows crisp, sowing air and
sand as it blows,
sowing, sowing,
wind that does not rest but it
argues and it presses, persists, as we twist and shift
and fidget
and curse at its blowing and curse at the sand that is blown and snatch at bites of sleep
as the wind cries,
as it cries as it calls
as it sows,
calling to us to remember, not to forget:
we who lie at the edge where
grubs the
sea that calls to blood as we sleep under the stars of the black
of above
and
smell the smell of the sea in the long air, blown,
sea
that waits, waits, waits beside us and calls as we
sleep,
sea that claims, reclaims as it runs, as it runs, that claims and does
not relinquish and does not relent,
steadfast sea, unfailing sea, quick with tongues,
tossings, storm of fin, flashing,
that calls us to remember and not to forget:
we who lie under doonas, who lie in sleeping bags, in swags,
who
lie filled with stars, and sea, with night and the
air of the wind that blows and it blows,
we who lie as we are as the red roos, in scent of green,
leap and they spring, they bound,
drumming as they go, as they dance the dry sand-throated ground