Becoming woman
i
I write myself on the page
not as the universal I, but 'woman'
padding the tide's morning surf.
a camera lucida of memory catches Broken Bay
in the earnest scurry of soldier crabs, the whoop of rod line
and sinker, rows of paddleboats, dinghies upturned
metres from a young girl/becoming woman.
on the bow of a boat, she ripples film into surface water
tilts the cabin's channel observance
before diving in
ii
she is woman now, remembering the real
that-has-been before the lens, first crack in the sepia edges
of an Ettalong shore, pylon cling of a Wagstaff ferry
its fluxive rub, seagulls shouldering flag-line
their white calligraphy of tarp.
silent beach empty as a lonely dune
waits for the first child out of school
waits for the ringed plunge of blood worms
summer's shifting canoe.
only the bay gives out a different call
when the seaweed's parted and a fisherman casts
an angry fist, buries the globe of his belly in water
iii
while ratcheting his dinghy
there is no need for the ebb and flow of his outrage
when there are machinations of a better catch, bay offering
the martini of her sex, olive flesh, oblique lip, the aftermath
of radio silence, channel marker showing signs
of deeper water to come, inlet anchoring ideas
into a dark grid of trees, barnacled shore
iv
there on that sea the boat's voice erupts
churning silt into the engine's memory
scuttling the gelatin-still surface, silver glide of whitebait.
on the sandbar's thin back there is no one, no rock.
only the sound of halyards clinking mainsail and jib, the scum
of mutineers darkening the page, Phantom busy clapping heads
off the coast of Martinique.
she can't wait for the scrub slide, prickly foothills, his breath
stinging her with last night's rum. she is Daisy lifting feathers
from a comic book frame, spur-winging waves, the way
waterfowl do, sending out an adrenalin of colour, though
her aim is to run
v
she has become nineteen
contemplating the way it was, ghosts under the bed
voyeurs skirting her legs, flasher at Central. Liverpool beanie
on a train journey, coercing his fingers under newsprint,
thinks he can tunnel the black hole of her knees.
Phantom's Diana symbolically vanishes from the platform,
as the day lingers in the hem of torchlight, in the descent of
theatre stairs. the hushed expectancy: tunic in storms of sweetness,
candy pulp in miserable alleys, pace of streets under raucous shoes,
the Saturday gaze of grimy men. the one from the bay still
crunching his boots and black singlet into the words of her poem, over
and over, his loose tongue ripping into the motor of memory
the lost harbour of her youth
vi
a faint scent of the bay returns
like entrails and fish-heads in the stern of a boat.
this time, his image is the one the older woman
releases into water
catching the sunlight
before it sinks and drowns.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
