THE SOUTH
Esperance: Blow-ins At West Beach with Wind And Wine and A Kite-surfer
‘blow-ins,’ a bald-headed man muttered as we sat:
Damian swigged from his glass of draught: ‘here in
Esperance,’ he said cheerfully, ‘everyone’s a blow-in,
but from a philosophical point of view, of course, one
could argue that everyone everywhere is a blow-in’:
‘piss off, jug ears,’ the man snarled, yellow-toothed,
and the locals turned their heads, stared hard, and we
pissed off, we pissed off to the grogshop if the truth
must be told and chose a cask of Lindemans soft dry
red and nursed the Commodore to West Beach where
the sea thumps in from that bay of granite breasts
and we took refuge from the wind behind a shoulder
of rock and bled the wine, tapped it, mother's milk,
and yabbered, tongueing the air as we drank as
the wind raged past lifting the white fine white sand
and whipping the blue of the water into green that
hissed with white and soon the wine had done what
wine is meant to do and the wind was forgotten and
the bald man with the yellowed teeth was no one at
all and the world was nothing but hope sweet hope:
then some fool yelled: ‘what the fuck we waitin’ for?’
and so the chill cutting sea received us as the water
broke about, and we kicked through it as we stroked
at its breaking as it beat down blue, and green, and
white: ‘watch the rip!’ the shout went up, and we
fought across the greedy drag, the tug, the suck of
deep, headed into the chopping that sprayed and it
whipped and we horsed as it churned, seethed, and
we rode the thunder, came in spilling and rolling,
gloating in the gallop of water, the charge of breath,
stood shivering behind our rock, thinking of food,
calories, sugar, as a bloke stumbled through the wind,
stumbled across the creaking sand: he eyed the cask:
‘can you help a fellow? maybe a drink of somethin’?’
but wine wouldn’t help so we told him to try water,
it was good to drink water, but he scowled, shouted:
‘ya dickheads!’ he shouted, ‘what’s wrong with ya?’
and he stumbled on, he stumbled on over the sand
so fine, so white: and soon Damian licked at the last
of his wine: ‘he’s a no-hoper, that bloke’, he said,
‘but from a philosophical point of view, you might
well argue that everyone everywhere is a no-hoper’:
‘piss off, jug ears,’ we shouted, and we pissed off,
the four of us, cursing the wind that blew us cold
and sober, almost sober, and left the beach and sea
to the granite foreheads slipping into the water and
a kite-surfer slicing against the air, sheeting, and
jumping, working the wind, and the cask we left
empty, glorious in promise, behind the rock: the
tides and sun would get at the cardboard and break
it down and salt and birds and time would tear the
shining bladder to nothing and we would be elsewhere
in some place or other where too the sand is white as
white as clean can be and where other winds blow
to shore and other seas run day upon day after day
and blokes with kites leap the torn breakers, flying