Landscape lost in scorbutic gloom

– the fatal blackness of the pupil –

Sturt’s body devolves

to swim the ancient ocean

that shadows country.
Completely deprived of the use of my limbs

He writes scurvy as antipodean progress

as well as a pain in the arse

so it’s fortunate – providential even –

salinity’s as visible as its productions

& though the water can’t be drunk

he finds its promise

buoys his swimming out,

(read as in),

an Australian crawl he invents

to find the flood

that floats him, limbless,

home again.