Poems

David Scro: ‘Double Bay Beach – 17 October 2020’

Double Bay Beach – 17 October 2020

Out there the water is blue,
closer to shore it is the colour of stout.

The beach sleeps brown and hairy,
waves seek it under the nod of hulls.

Grey blankets of cloud
are pulled up to the sky’s chin, lumpy
with the limbs of a sleeping god.

The water recedes, the harbour
is being drunk, and the seaweed laid bare
turns from brown to red:

the discarded rete mirabile
of some leviathan dead
and rotted out at sea—

but the sea is far from here.

Sails, with amphetamine energy, brave the foam
and roar.

The wind longs to unstitch the harbour’s hem
and go its way unseen.

Out there the water holds the hand
of the grey sleeping god. I sit, sniffed by dogs,
discarded on the beach.

Sydney,
there are too many tunnels
to get to your sea.

David Scro

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