Like the Ocean Running Deep Under Everything
A mycorrhizal mycoform: several independent poems sharing textual material functioning as a connective network.

the skin on my hands
steals softness from yours
frayed at the edges, flakes lifting away
like the sheets peeling
from the paperbark in the yard
the tree, older than me,
perennially shedding its skin
my hands remember themselves,
still soft
not yet known to the red rashes that blister
like the barnacles that break the waves
on the rocky knuckles of the coast
as my body abrades
and still,
l   i   k   e      t   h   e     o    c   e   a   n
you held them all the same













the river rapid and turbid
where I last saw
lean and sun-kissed
the reckless confidence
of wrecking youth
laughing at something
or someone
the bank eaten away
corroded by the current
whirling away
ripples in me
r   u   n   n   i   n   g      d   e   e   p




old report cards for the doctor
on the dining table
comments about attitude,
organisation, untidy handwriting
asking an eight-year-old boy
to just try harder, be better
my mother asking how
I can know for sure
and how long it's been this way
married to a man who can't sit still
or finish a project
before moving onto the next
she turns a needle in her hand
pulling yarn through a loop
the same energy moving
u   n   d   e   r      e   v   e   r   y   t   h   i   n   g