–          For Michelle Hamadache



Slim your willow arms, Michelle—

slide inside the ocean blue. Collar-

oy! Make your decisions on the page

so readers and writers
see the world that swims inside of you:

a little synecdoche—

a little grass on the wind,

a slender rustle and twitch
a stitch in time, none of this

is wasted on you(th). A part of you

stands in for all of me and everyone

you teach. Your hands craft
fine-boned sentences. Frengarlish

will overcome so many mother tongues—

an Algerian aubergine, a French heart,

an artichoke from Greenacre. A complicated recipe
is no impediment to (forbidden) love,

though nothing you cross out is ever misspelt,

left untidy or out of line.

You follow your father’s wave—
[elliptical] across missing metonymies of time—

fly your beloved across open skies:

waving, hello, hello, and many goodbyes.

Shelly, your cove awaits—so come with me
on this oceanic walk where anemone

shells await a hillside alive with

Sydney Harbour dragonflies. Black swans

in sequin shimmer, poised on the pointe of parataxis.
You bring so many writers

onto the page—many who were never heard

now juxtaposed in printed truths.

We value your simple language.
Anaphora calls, she calls, she calls

and-and-and-waves fall upon

such recursive shores (repeat). And if an em

should hammer an en, it’s only because
the fit is wrong—not quite size ten,

a little quizzical, imperial, your world

is not quite metric, yet. A storm fragments

as you cross the bridge: you hold together
explanations and never swim too far from your beloved D—

Why… slim your willow arms as you slide

into the colour blue—how many writers’ lives

now swim a colour of you.