The Bronte Splashers

In the mottled pool

Sea turtle heads bob

In lazy orbits.

 

The routine:

Dip    bake    dip    bake

Coconut oil thrown

In small tides, and hourly

Across rumpled  skin.

 

He defies cancer

It’s sunscreen, that’ll give to you

Does his wife adore

The tangerine tint?

 

As salt crystals dry crunchy

On porous sandstone,

On backs and shoulders

And on our bodies

Yet to grow brittle,

like theirs.

 

In the Ladies

Curved bedrock

Valley and crevice

Toughened and ground down

By wind and years,

Bending un/gracefully

They are free of our younger angst.

 

In curtained costumes

And swim caps,

Their goose pimpled flesh

Prepares for invigoration

And the sudden sensation

Of ice water.

 

As surfers speckle

The line-up

Like ants

And just as ravenous,

The waves do summersaults.

 

Photo: Lee Morgan

 

 

Elevation

In the Tenderloin

A man with bloodied foot

Yelled that middle class women

 

Outside Amoeba

Your mum – visiting for three weeks

Stepped on a human shit

And it was entertaining

For the guy selling the Streetsheet

 

That was before we bought

Towns Van Zandt’s record

And remembered

To talk about the sweetness of springtime

Every now and again

 

And you found

That codeine was a good friend

 

When the Giants won the World Series

A drunken mob set a bus on fire

And the lady standing next to you

Made the most of the broken windows of an electronics store

 

Berkeley went crazy on mushrooms

And you thought you would end up

In Rockland with Carl Solomon

Or in the Tenderloin with bloodied foot

Yelling something about

Middle class women

 

Across the bay in Oakland

At the Fox Theatre

Car horns sounded

And people cheered back from the sidewalk

Because Obama was back in

And we had a martini with a guy called Larry

Who kept saying

It’s a good day, it’s a real good day

 

At midnight

When the storm came

We left the calm of no. 24

And climbed the bald hill

At Bernal

Fell into the violent wind

With Tessa

And the incandescence stretched out ahead

To touch the racing stars

 

(This poem was published by Verity La)

Leaning Toward Canaan

Silence cups the ear

Hills of boulder rise,

As if each smooth rock put

One atop the other

Dropped precisely and deliberately

From above,

The expansive dome.

 

Speckled across ferrous sand

The Joshua tree like an army

Poised for crusade

In timeless moment

Leaning toward Canaan.

The Cray Fisherman

Down by the silvering inlet

You watched me

Watch a stingray dance

It fluttered on the water’s rippled surface

And went.

Traffic lights

You say,

I don’t know how you do it.

It was talked about

When Moruya got its first

And only set.

 

Down on 24^th and Mission

I watch you

Watch a woman dance

She whirls as someone plays violin

By the metro station

To an emptying street

Her red dress

A flit of colour

Suspended under night air

And gone.

 

You steer your boat home

To your quiet inlet

Its swirling eddies

And are happy.