in a room, rising
water invades
our fear, the sky
weeps, in the home
on the carpet
at our knees.
before I go, the mother
tells her child
of this world
in which you must go on.
in time
capsules of dark
dewy rain
forests, the night
-jars sleep
in familial
warmth felt
over oceans
where fishers spit
lines in the Tagus’
mouth, a promised
sea reneged
of vow, bereft
of bacalhau
knowing even
fish slip shades
of decades –
time means nothing
when you’re on the run.
her name, rising
with the weight
of tears
like hooks
in tongues
of rivers
searching flood
-plains with a final,
salivating thirst.
come, Mother
destined as
butterflies’
flit wayward
across heating
isles, their gaudy
wings exhumed
as she sits
wet, wrung
exhausted.
how quickly water rises
levees split
like fissures
of dry
in a past
rivers
skin
how quickly water rises
to your last
gaping
breath
as jiving bull
-kelp rise,
then vanish
pencil pines
snow gums
mountain ash
rise, then vanish
to oblivion in sun
-bathers stretched
across boulevards
of beaten dunes
clawed by
memories
of the sea
shifting
in flux, rising.
not this time, Boy
for there will
always be
movement
yet, some
things remain
static, steadfast
like a mother’s
heart
inside her child
beating brazen
as an auburn
dawn, rising.
move, rise
with the water
with the world
in which you must go on.
