I can’t tell you

          how the storm raged

along the coast,

          the year before I was born.
Tides in concert with celestial bodies aligned,

syzygy and perigee—         

the moon in her kissed

dance with Earth.          
I can’t tell you how

          my mother, pregnant with me

bailed night water

          from the second floor window
of the red brick units in front of ours,

or how she gagged behind a sandbag         

as the water threatened to pull

it all in.          
How the bloodless sun

          rose in the empty sky

and my mother walked miles of splinted wood;

          the famous harbour pool threshed
along the beach. How, like a broken

line of teeth, the remaining pieces         

held in sea. How the boardwalk reached

for brokenness, penning equations of its former self.          
Two hours north came the call:

          ships were to move

out from the battering coast

          but the Norwegian carrier remained,
cyclonic winds pounding waves, pushing

its 53,000 tonnes across the bight,         

before finally dragging floor

off Stockton beach, its spine cleaved.          
All the while I rolled in my mother’s stomach.
I was unexpected, she said

          unwanted—by my father.

She was sick, convinced

          sickness would take me:
the baby’s room remained unpainted

no cot in place, toys and clothes         

still wrapped; ribbons
          yet to be undone.

As if the storm that unpicked the pier

          undid her,

the black water she bailed

a sign.