Relaxed, way out to sea,

way out of my depth,

unable to touch bottom,

reef, bullkelp, urchin spine,

I tread water, monitor backwash

and rip, listen for dolphin jump,

osprey, gulls in pairs,

catch Southern Ocean surge,

with neither compass nor chart,

semaphore nor morse code

to count the swill of atmosphere,

heart pump, the pressure

of fathom on lungs that

shudder, quake in hope,

remand slap and rush

against wavespray, stringybark,

windowframe, lock.
Deep under dunedrift,

shoulders, elbows subluxed,

askew, wrists disjunctured,

fingernails long gone,

my company, gooseneck

barnacles, cuttlebones, great

crested tern inspecting

my eyes for death, the meanwhile,

however, the nevertheless,

when only a newspaper page,

postcard shred, a fisherman’s

glass float, fray, hook,

shout, sunblack and blistered,

with nothing more

to be heard under the load

daytide squall parries far

across displaced wrack.
One million years,

ten, five hundred million,

stratigraphy dawning

over definition, site,

the slow flood of earth,

while I reconsider flightless

birds, crocodiles, sandworms,

evaluate flint, jasper, quartz

through carbon cycles,

nitrogen, the complex sugars

that once caramelled

your lips, pursed around

howl and whistle and roar,

sunk almost past lines’ end

until gales abate, seek

limbered skeletons to release,

expose unyielding bedrock.