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.