WA Poets Inc Creatrix 65 Poetry

the vixen sleeps in the den with
her tail wrapped around her. Snug, no
cares, only twitchy dreams. Leaves
when she hears her mate calling to
her from where the icy winds blow

Maria Bonar

burn as a transitive verb

mixing all the colours of the earth
            makes black
mixing all the colours of the sky
            makes white
this is called politics

mixing all the colours of the earth
with all the colours of the sky
            makes red
this is called history

the trick is to mix
the sun and the moon
and hope and terror and death
this is called love

Mar Bucknell

Detritus beside Shacks Holden

Where red brick wall
meets grey sand,
two sprayed weeds
clinging limply to cracks
as if darkness might still
nurture hairy stems,
clusters of domed buttons

yellow-softer seeming
than those of the sunny
cardigan mum wore
fencing off the wild
and its flowers
from the careless
curiosity of us kids.

Laid neatly alongside,
two cigarettes, unsmoked,
papers as pristine
as that of cigarettes
Asians offer to their dead.

Along Inner Harbour,
through gaps in mist,
ships parked as if ’planes
on sea grey as an aircraft
carrier; cranes dangling
rust-wreck’t angular bobs,
plumbing hazy cityscape;

and—bouncing off walls,
shivering glass—
phlegmy coughs of trucks
shunting containers
up James Street hill
to red-yellow-green
beat of traffic lights,

their roars obliterating,
almost, sepia memories
Autumn brings sometimes,
leaving undertow of things
left too long undone.

Peter Burges

Life in Fading Light

The passion sparked in
bright light,

When we were young.
gripped by need
of each other.

Life, vibrant,
colourful,
waiting, impatient for
next time.

Passion fades,
light dims.

Colours dilute, lose that rapid pulse,
in our hearts,
passion.
Gone.

Love stands strong.
Watches as the light fades.

Transitions,
without passion.
Impacted by loss.

Grasping for wisdom,
acceptance of what is,

Eddy Campbell

____________________

Meteorological Memories of the Perth Summer of 2024

Week Forecast
No rain
No rain
No rain
No rain
No rain
No rain
No rain

Fortnight Forecast
No rain No rain
No rain No rain
No rain No rain
No rain No rain
No rain No rain
No rain No rain
No rain No rain

Month forecast
No rain No rain No rain No rain No rain
No rain No rain No rain No rain No rain
No rain No rain No rain No rain No rain
No rain No rain No rain No rain
No rain No rain No rain No rain
No rain No rain No rain No rain
No rain No rain No rain No rain

Coral Carter

Spin the Wheel

Mum won the chops
on spin the wheel
with her blind-chosen
number ninety-two
her age as it happened.
The parcel was handed to her
by the club president with a kiss
there ya go darlin’
and an offer
to help her cook them
any Saturday night
after the footy of course.

Her name announced as winner
brought Gwen,
an admirer
eighty-eight and spry.
She arrived with
an armload of hugs
with loving thanks
and forever gratitude for
teaching her to swim
in the adult classes
all those years ago.

Together they recalled
jumping off the old jetty
screaming like teenagers.
Mum holding Gwen’s hand
to help Gwen complete
the adult swimming certificate.
Gwen’s new goal was to live beyond
the one hundred and one years
of her favourite aunt.
Mum wants to reach one hundred
to see her great-grandkids grown.

It takes courage
to learn to swim as an adult
when your fear is set.
To live a long life
you take your number
and wait for the spin.

Coral Carter

Clancy’s

a lambent afternoon
the light low
and still warm
the new swell has arrived
and Clancy’s smoulders the air
nostalgic

they play
my kind
of songs
and i’m wondering

why
isn’t
everyone
here?

with legs bare
to the honey sun
and the saltsmoke breeze
calling out this trick
of autumn.

Catriona Della Martina

____________________

Comfort of Eating

No amount of yoga could stretch
this weight from my bones
and each Warrior pose settles me
deeper with the heaviness of excess
that has crawled into appetite.

The rounded slouch that balloons
to pudgy armour—the need
for the comfort of eating.
How meals become stepping stones
through each long day and fasting
becomes a saw through ambition, a chisel
paring compassion as the world funnels
back to the concept of ‘me’.

This me beyond care, beyond aesthetics—
an illusion reflected on television
—a smattering of episodes that build
to a conclusion based on lies and wishes
only to have the sun rise once more
despite the petty hands of manipulation.

The end that is a circle to find oneself
within a pool that is dark, the medium mud.
Where the rim stretches beyond reach—
taller than a shout—as stars glitter goodbye
and the moon is the only light in the attic
as I seek the comfort
of food.

Gary Colombo De Piazzi

Once In A Lifetime

In the outer city suburb
Redeveloped as Lake Treeside –

An old brickworks site
—————————————–With groundwater pit

Designed to enhance community wellbeing

Manufacturing waste having been removed
————————————–And factory by-products treated

Touted as a haven for native wildlife

Where housecats prowl the concrete byways –

Ghostgum Drive is lined
With murals of trees
Depicted in abstract forms
Rectangular branches without leaves
Shades of muddy pink
On traffic barrier walls
Rooted in the soil
Where ghostgums once flourished
Before bulldozers blazed their trail
Residents cannot see
Remaining patches of bushland across the highway
Because of the acoustic panels

Those in the exclusive
Limited release boutique estate
Boasting prime plots
Large enough to
Store a wheelie bin
Enjoy uninterrupted views
Of brickwork spray painted
With unique spider orchids endemic to the area
By an artist commissioned to save
The flowers’ likeness
Before they become extinct

Frustrated commuters
Driving to beat the lights
Often hit rare and threatened quenda
Displaced and searching for a new home
Morning motorists
Juggling coffee in one hand
Clip the wings
Of ravens, eagles, hawks
Attracted to the carrion
Leaving them flightless
And defenceless, limping
Into the path of oncoming traffic

Locals wonder what happened to the soul
Of their neighbourhood
And scorn the dustbowl
They refer to as
Make Treeless

Kathleen Dzubiel

Drought or Draught

Poetry once poured out of me,
now it just drips and drips and drips.
It was what once set me free
as poetry poured out of me,
now it prefers to let me be.
It used to come in gulps not sips
as it cascaded out of me,

now its tardy tap only drips…

Derek Fenton

Misprision*

Now they have eventually set me free
I am sure that I will miss my prison,
there where I experienced the most glee.
I don’t really like what has arisen.
I didn’t find poetic form a chain,
rather just a gentle nudge from behind,
More like glorious sunshine and not rain
which green eyed youngsters see as unrefined.

Protected by new dogma they displace
form as they have done to baby boomers’
environmental destruction disgrace
ridding themselves of torturous tumours
Now that I find myself outside my cell
I think confinement has prepared me well.

*according to the critic Harold Bloom, a kind of distortion by which a poet creates a poem in reaction against another poet’s powerful precursors poem. Young people feel threatened by their more established, more revered predecessors whom they deliberately misread in an effort to displace them, thus providing space for their own imaginations

Derek Fenton

Thirty minutes until the next bus

there is an old church
across from the bus station
it has been vacated by worshippers
and the only thing to have risen
is the damp in the crumbling walls

a desecrated space
a place with creaking boards
and cracked lead-lights
this chapter is filled with shelves and cages
the shuffle of shoppers
keeping dry until the bus comes

in an ill-lit corner
a new flock congregates
birds from sunnier climes
fluffing their feathers
a coloured repetition of parrots
white rabbits in urine stained straw
Guinea pigs capering between limp carrots

dullness is smothering the light
and two small hands reach out
narrow set eyes flinching in a skull white face
when she is approached
she withdraws her hands
curling her tiny fingers around the bars

she opens her mouth
a grimace of sharp teeth
vampiric, gothic
cavernous as a scream
the rain is rattling the windows
but this is no ark
she is a singular specimen
no doves, no olive leaves
a caged squirrel monkey
in an old church
across the road from the bus station

Ann Gilchrist

Resilience

He calmed me
with the smile
of a man used to
being unobserved.

In the pulpit
he was a preacher
of words
of wisdom and warmth.

Seldom cross
in my presence,
silent under
my grandmother’s gaze

he would
take my hand –
three squeezes, I love you
four, I love you too.

He left me
the gift
of strength
in a silent smile.

Candy Gordon

It’s Time

it was cold
in the house
the kindling box
was empty
the axe
embedded
in the chopping block
was silent

she hadn’t opened
the backdoor
for two days now
stepping out
onto the verandah
was too hard
and it was cold.

the dog pawed
at the door
whined
looked up at her
we need to go out
we need fresh air

she opened the door
slow to step out
to look at the boots
the jacket the hat
until roused
by the dog’s bark

she put her hand out
touched the jacket
pressed it to her face
inhaled the smokiness
from that last bushfire
only a month ago

the dog waited
watched danced
from paw to paw
knowing it was time
to put on the jacket
and so she did

Candy Gordon

Mexican Opals

In their antique box, Mexican opals gleamed their queer, amazing orange,
causing one to shiver delightfully
each a beautiful, ethereal liquid beauty ….
and of many sizes
But no.
Far too many and way too special.
Something less was necessary
Cash was enough after all.
He was a reasonable man
Cash a fair way to repay an old, key debt
He’d neglected
In such a bewildering manner
Yes.
Though now
given the current state of my personal poverty
What to do with all that cash?

susanne harford

Rock Art

Swishing hair matches
butter-cream bundle
tucked under her arm

long nails gleaming red
she strides into the sea,
lavender two-piece holds

flesh firm, reaches out to
place small creature
safe on a flat rock.

Quick pat, backs away
admonishing hand says
stay, wades until deep

enough to dive, strong
crawl for twenty strokes,
turns and back to scoop

up tail wagging charge.
On the groyne towel, pillow,
are ready, she sits with

pup snug under the crook
of her knees, lies back
to read under the sign

No Dogs Allowed well
away from groping
tentacles of the law’s reach.

Jenifer Hetherington

Back There

Back there, in that almost lost time,
there are memories,
some good, some not so much,
though who can remember
the way it was in that earlier life,
another age in another world.
Yet I would go there,
cross those years, the stretch
of distance between then and now.

To step away from what is sure,
at least what is present,
takes no courage, requires no risk.
It’s more curiosity, a desire
to reconnect, to know again
that unique moment
when I was young,
the world expectant, an empty stage
waiting for me to me to enter.

The memories jostle for attention,
look at this one, look at that one,
images of places, people, happenings
assembled briefly before random
departures for different destinations,
scattering to residences in my mind
whose keys I have misplaced.
I will find them, not where I look
or when, only in my dreams.

I remember the night when it began,
that first thrusting in to love,
exquisite awakening joy,
the welcoming otherness,
and after, the quiet mutuality
of joint acceptance,
the shared knowing,
being together, separate from the rest,
imagining its timelessness.

Half a century backwards,
so easily collapsed
in a minute of reminiscence.
Singular moments stepped into,
already elusive before they’re finished,
silently haunt us: restless ghosts
fixed to solitary niches in memory
which I foolishly believe wait for me,
if only I can return, find them once more.

Ruari Jack Hughes

Lions in Hong Kong

The lions dip and weave to the drum
in gold-frilled, red-fringed
purple nylon tracksuits

They eat the lettuce,
collect the red envelope
hung in the mouth
of Starbucks

Next door, McDonalds’ mouth
offers the lions
nothing. Why?

Jackson

unfaithful

I seem to be in a relationship
with Starbucks
Starbucks is my American boyfriend
He squires me everywhere
Yínchuān
Chéngdū
Guìlín
and now
Hong Kong

But today I was unfaithful
I went out instead with
that hip young English foodie
Pret A Manger

Jackson

Panthers

Two neckties remain, one for funerals, the other—
a souvenir of a 20 years on, team reunion.
That second tie, dark blue, monogrammed CWFL Premiers 82.
The Team Photo had me, the socially weird
skinny, outsider (one albeit with a handy left foot)
bare shoulder to bare shoulder with tiny town boys:
Lumpy, Copper Knob, Hutchie, Squirty, Flop and Crow et al
kitted out in hooped socks, our jerseys navy blue.

These were men I didn’t really know, natives of a town
I had never really explored, so after that reunion
before returning to the antlike, cosmopolis,
I took a last look at ‘The Home of the Pneumatic Postdriver’—
Co-op, shire hall, CWA, primary school, the WW2 military museum.
Might any of the Nungarin Panthers left behind
have suffered in the spirit of Rilke’s Panther,
pacing circles in the local hotel bar, minds shuttered from exotic worlds?

Ross Jackson

____________________

Off medication

People are warming to me.
Unexpectedly, I’m warming to them.
This has not been so
since I was quite young.
How can it be? Can I believe it?

My mind is now free
to do that which
I have wanted to do
but could or did not.
Amazingly, I may be able
to leap tall buildings,
to solve Rubik’s cube,
to comprehend Finnegan’s Wake,
to speak a language
which was foreign to me.

I could make a dovetail joint,
with a little advice,
master sailing a yacht,
pilot a plane,
swim lengths of a pool,
surf and not get
dragged down by undertow,
overcome my fear of shark attack
by entering the sea
to scuba dive.

Later, eerily, I feel to be
increasingly weighted,
becoming sad.
My recent uplifting feeling
is leaving me.
I now need that medication
which, while feeling empowered,
I binned.

I thought that this lightened mood
would not end, not ever slip away
from me.

peter knight

Behind the Mask

“Give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth.”
Oscar Wilde

I put mine on every day,
fitting it tenderly to the bones of my face.
Camouflage covering every flaw.
Yet, I am curious about what is revealed
as I pat maquillage into place,
paint on pouting lips of invitation,
outline my eyes with fine black kohl.
I think I am creating mystery, allure,
and wonder if, in fact
I’m telling a truth through concealment.
Me afraid of the world,
Me afraid of eyes that penetrate,
Me afraid of judgement.
This painted skin stretches thin,
a fragile protection. Truth lies evident
in a tortured mouth and green-lit eyes.
My disguise sits temporary, slips, tilts,
revealing a false bravado,
fear vibrating underneath.
All flaws exposed to the censure of the world
where eyes wait, fattening like crows;
relentless, vicious, stabbing,
cawing cold judgement on my proffered truth.
I have been found wanting.

Veronica Lake

Breath

In that poised misty moment before
sunrise, collapsed balloons lie limply
waiting for the whoosh of flame,
surreal as dragons breathing fire, and
mine’s a real killer – Benson & Hedges
emblazoned bold across our orb of gold.
Those were the days when you could

deal death in shiny packs of twenty-five.
Dangling in wicker baskets, we float
above the farmers’ fields, drifting with
the wind in a silence broken only by
our dragon’s fiery breath. Our heads
are hot, feet are numbly cold and in
the early morning, all is burnished gold.

Aloft on this eagle-eyed thermal ride,
we keep pace with the balloon-shaped
shadow below, a blot on the landscape
like some malignant shadow on a lung.

Mardi May

Cleaning house

Wiping down
the kitchen table
feels like tears,
but I can’t cry.
I vacuum
the living room,
so many
things to do
and not enough.
Pressure
in the left side
of my skull
pushing in
like a thumb.

Cat box,
oh glorious
cat box,
deliver me
from my sins,
that I again
may experience
tranquility.

Dishes,
baptize me
in your murky
dish water
so that I may smell
like lemon dawn,
the liquid
on my face,
lukewarm and bubbly,
feels like
I’m going home.

Daniel Millar

evening blooms over Perth Canyon

seadragon-shaped, a fissure evoking pre-history
as if a poem written by the dying light
of a calendar that will one day drown too.

holocene imprint, victim of ‘bergs,
glacial & immense, bring us ice songs
of freeze & flood, how once-was

can become nevermore. an epitaph awaiting
us as time grinds history deeper into our bones.
& lo, a sentry: a single boobook keeps count

of the cataclysm,
of the closeness.
it does not sing.

it does not speak.
clouds unravel
as if ghosts

being released.
moon ascends:
it too is silent.

Scott-Patrick Mitchell

Warmer Months

The heady smell of garden hose spray,
of wattle pollen up your nose like snuff.
The spider outside with her fat, spangled
abdomen, swinging in a leaf hammock
in our garden, full of white caviar.
Gum bark clinging grey, hanging on like
a last hope.
Cries from the district swimming pool,
a distant screen door and a shout,
sounds of heedless youth.

I have not forgotten the breeze
that fluttered your dress, flustered,
flattered you that summer day.
We eat outside and open doors
for the warm, welcome air.
Closer to nature.
Too close to nature?
A too friendly magpie flies around our
front room. Visions of blood
and feathers on a mirror.
But it finds its way outside.
We all want to escape the parlour.

Julian O’Dea

Morning Cat

She returns, expressionless of course,
the footpad, her rap sheet as long
as her tail, having escaped us,
her jailers, overnight.

Covered in secrets collected
in the night like cobwebs,
eyes dark as discs of the new moon,
Night’s ambassador,
expecting the warm welcome.

Julian O’Dea

Calendar December 2023

The calendar brings in the sea and its baths to my kitchen. That endless
changing blue of sea and sky, a calm, the tang of salt and feet-hot sands in late
afternoon. When you stroke a lap there is
always weed, just tendrils, and stalks, a bemused crab, and once a blue stinger.
Sand slides across the shallow end, there is grit on the steps. The daily crew
wear tight caps, one pieces, their age showing but they cut lazily up and back,
relentless without effort, put me to shame as I veer clumsily crossing unspoken
lanes, choke on salt water and the desire to snort heat from my nose
embarrassing.
When I stumble replete, to the faded painted edge my towel is more than
damp, I never learn. Dump it on the sandstone hollows that rise to lomandras
clinging to cliffs, watch as a toddler pees near the edge, no-one cares, waves
will wash it, we’re all in the zone.
Summer, autumn, sea baths. I will cut off that photo and frame it, to remind
me of another love.

Virginia OKeeffe

Snow chain

In the Holden, jammed in the back seat with my
brothers, we rise up the white mountain stained with foreign
snow, not neat smooth alps but mountain ash country
where the scent of wet leaves off peppermints awakes
sleepy bodies who stomp about, inspect the snow chains.To
pretend we know how these will crunch through fresh
ice and hold us safe and dry while watching flakes of snow
fall on the windscreen. Outside we shove each other, an
eagerness to be the first on the toboggan, unexpected
gift from Dad, made in the shed at autumn’s end
when poplars changed to yellow and the smoke of
box trees rose, mingled with valley fog, a season
for old endings, new toboggans, we are awakened, falling.

Virginia OKeeffe

A ‘golden shovel’ form using: Fran Graham China Rondell
‘My foreign country awakes to fresh snow
an unexpected end of season falling.’

____________________

White Smoke Dictionaries

When I was young I was so good at running away from myself
that one bright and otherwise perfect day I got completely lost.

The road signs were written in Sanskrit, all house numbers in
hieroglyphics, the pilot far above on the edge of a cumulonimbus

collapse was carving white smoke dictionaries of Papua New Guinean
Pidgin. Nothing made sense except for the Border Collie

who made the big decision to walk with me awhile. And slowly.
When I dream of him today my eyes run like the mighty Murray

does as it courses its way between astoundingly beautiful,
multi-flowering, sleeper-making, shelter-giving River Red Gums .

I often lost myself then, I lose myself too often now. Only
yesterday I walked I thought from bedroom to bathroom

but found myself in the bright green tumbledown
yard conversing in ironic tones with a deeply-probing Black-

faced Cuckoo Shrike. All knowledge of intended purpose
had completely evaporated, but if you had seen me standing

there, eyes popping, heart racing, cock hardening, speaking
birdy talk that likely sounded like psychobabble,

you would have known, or likely guessed,
that who I was or who I wasn’t, simply did not matter.

Allan Padgett

Telling Tales

On a warm night in Winton with an open-air
cinema spread beneath the stars. Projector whirring,
images flickering, Hugh Jackman on the screen.

Ferries come and go as the Sydney Opera
House settles under the stars. A pale soprano
immersed in La Traviata’s tragic ending.

Beside the still water of a billabong, an old
man gestures to the stars. Light from a campfire,
shadows on a rock, kangaroo dreaming.

ancient tales
a child lifts her gaze
to the heavens

Gregory Piko

A Butterfly Has Come to My Garden

A butterfly has come to my garden to die
ancient oracle with tissue thin wings
barely animated by a passing breeze.

Vibrant orange and black tapestry
unfurled gently across green blades of grass.
All is quiet all is the same as before.

Elena Preiato

The void

Its never been the same
An inexplicable loss
That for decades has haunted me
Leaving an emptiness
A hollowed out part of me
That I cannot fill
For there is no hope
No concept of reconciliation
Just a void
Left by an offspring
Who cannot see the benefit of family

Barry Sanbrook

____________________

Soused Tailor

We troll for Tailor, skippered by a setting sun.
Squint-eyed, buoyed by a bucket of optimism,
eager lines taught over the transom
lulled by other boats’ fluky rhythms.

Ferocious bites; Taylor are like landing a marlin.
Dinghy fights sea breeze, bow cleaves waves,
outboard stutters, shirt soaked, chill sets in.
Roseate sky, sun’s last rays wink and ricochet.

Baleful glass-eyes stare from the baking tray,
my catch in vinegar, cloves and other spices.
Slow oven, two hours, fridge them for a day.
Now they’re done, take your places.

Soused Tailor, aromatic,
delicious, bones soft, decalcified,
permission to glut yourself,
you can crunch them.

Laurie Smith

The Tuck Shop

Gooseberry Hill shop stood opposite the siding,
a weatherboard hut with an iron roof
stumped floor and doors back and front.
Local oranges and fruit are boxed
stacked and tilted up out front.
Shelved packets of tea and tins,
coke and milk in the Kero fridge.
Smokes and lollies on the go
for passengers disembarked on foot.
My father stopped there, he said,
on the last zig-zag train run in ’49
as afore did my grandfather and his father.
The shop is still there, vacant – full of absence.
Reminding me, bringing forth the presence of my past.

Michael Stevens

Daisies

“It’s getting hotter,” she says—

my mother’s quiet acknowledgement
that this is not the world her father fought for.

I change the subject as a kindness—
best not to dwell
on inconvenient truths.

It shames me to admit it but,

in my weakest moments,
I go there—that unspeakable place

like an open grave waiting to swallow
tomorrow whole—

and pull her under in my panic,
let my worry double,
triple in her chest until all my sorrows glisten

in the corners of her shell-shocked eyes.

I’m ashamed because I know better

than to make it real with real words,
let fear overwhelm me in her presence.

Who am I to wake her so roughly? Her world
should be painted with daisies—not lilies—
everlastings rendered in pale poppy-red.

In these disappearing years, she needs

a healthy diet of hope—
especially now with rations running low.

I owe her that. It’s my turn

to shoo away the monsters,
so I take her calloused hand,

apologise, and sing

the song of achievable goals—my garden
could do with more bee-friendly flowers—

and she’s smiling again, the war-torn child

soothed back to sleep.

“Hardy ones,” she says, “The kind that’s hard to kill.
Ones that love the sun because—you know—

it’s getting hotter.”

Jill Taylor Neal

Outside Bun Cha Co Dao Bakery, Footscray Mall

I don’t steal dogs laughed the Chinaman
reaching down to the old chihuahua gripped
by the woman on the bench
I don’t steal dogs.

The Chinaman (if Chinaman he was)
smooth skin, white teeth, goatee
resplendent in dungarees and boots
back pack swinging, fluffy toy dangling
knelt before the podgy, ugly dog
and offered his hand.
The squat body tugged on the lead.
Looking up to the woman the Chinaman chortled
I don’t eat dogs
I only eat hot dogs.

The older man beside him laughed too
They both bent over laughing.
The dog, yanked back by the woman and clutched to her chest
looked startled.
It’s eyes bulged.
I don’t eat dogs, the man sang as he rose lightly to his feet
I like to touch dogs, they’re lucky.
He danced away, still laughing.

Suzette Thompson

Drosera Bugs

Amid the hot shimmer of grasshoppers’
legs and wings, long sundews flowered
and sweated – flaring petals asway
in sunlight to bedazzle nectar-hungry insects –
while beneath, blood-coloured rosettes
secreted sticky sweetness. I kneeled
to find tiny flies entangled – vampirised –
and a different bug entirely, crouching
in one syrup-snared corona, immune
to those chitin-melting enzymes – gaunt,
unglueable, sap-green with sanguine blotches
to blend in with its host, stabbing the long
hypodermic of its proboscis – deep into a victim.

All over Rushy Point, hungry sundews trailed
across the tussocks, harbouring dart-faced bugs,
freeloading lurkers – perfect opportunists –
intent on heedless lives of lazy pillage –

until, that was, the humans came with flails,
upscaling what it means – to take advantage.

Giles Watson

Beach Dance with a Stranger

there’s the beach if you want to walk the air
and the stranger
will set watch on the moonlight where

all the dunes of sand and small grass tussocks
spoon shadows
for a quick shag on a towel

a long spill of hair curves the moon
flows over a rough hand
twists the eye

like cormorants your oil slicked
hooked limbs soft and tangled
bury in the feathered air

arced moon hooks the waves
flexed bones
stripped of tassels by a night wind

are cut free from ritual
they entwine
in a brief beach dance

Gail Willems
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