Rose Lucas
buffeted high on
jutted dunes we pull coats close while
icy wind wraps and swirls us
crenelations of salty air
below the viewing platform
the ochre snake of the beach
pitted with footprints
brinks wolf-grey ocean
a swooning sliding and swelling
a wide sweep that unfolds all the way
to the swaying curtain of turbulent sky
obliquely a patient eye registers
the slow break tell-tale spume of vertical water –
a whale’s barnacled roll
broad and black and
slick
as it opens a seam
into the chop
the quilted waves
a revelation of flukes heave and cut
through spray while gulls
clamour and cluster
they cry out in the fierce shaft of this
single moment
this witnessing of what sinks
into what is already deep and past seeing
the maw of this watery element
its rumours of refracting sound
its invisible by-ways
to inhabit the strange
and glinting chambers of other lives
turning and resting
and gone
Rose Lucas is a poet and academic living and working on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri in Naarm. Her most recent poetry collection is Increments of the Everyday (Puncher and Wattmann, 2022). She is also founding Editor at Liquid Amber Poetry Press.
Old Water Rat Publishing 