Photograph of the Clearing

For the photographers, Nick and Sara

The sun breaks on a home of homes, bursting

waves of the sea with light and warmth, urging

familiar footprints in beachsand ever nearer: come and

meet my new tide, happy folk and sad!  For yours

are but the thoughts, the feelings, and imaginings

of mortal kind.  How much more mortal, aye, am I —

who die, the cataclysm of all you’ll ever know?

The waves brush a rhythm that suits this early

reverie in the bush, the eternal and magical

and doomed and droughtstruck and utterly

faraway scrub.  Somewhere more near, one stronger

of ear than any here might hear the sounds of

crabs moving slowly over rocks, of fish slicing

through swash and undersurf, of the coastal

patrol pair of sea eagles flap an airbrake

for landing as they home, breakfast clutched

in the undercarriage.  I’m sorry that you and I

are not here; sorry that the life of faraway

has been so far away; sorry that my life remains

so shy of those golden footsteps and washing

of sandals, so shy of that fateful sunbreak.