Reaching Out

You can wait

like a great sad wolf

for the moon to rise,

or you can launch yourself flat

across the sky:

a pebble released

from fingers

to skip across waves,

clear the jagged white tips

of a shark mouth,

turn the tides

drunk

on aquamarine wine,

gawk at the beauty

Andromeda

chained to a rock,

spit, scream,

vomit,

whatever it takes

to tear off that carcass

of a shell,

slip through

Poseidon’s

falling trident and

wonder at your wake

as you scale the ocean’s abyss,

soar up, above,

beyond the last port of call

and leave behind

a thousand thoughts,

a hundred hearts,

ten nicknames,

six degrees,

skim one

last,

two last,

three lonely skims,

countless in all,

to the cold horizon

before succumbing

to the gulp

of salt,

a pebble sinking

just short

of the pink

sunset.

(previously published in a UTS Anthology, 2005)