Estuary

To Rex

Wind crosshatches shallow water.

Paddocks rest in the sea's arm.

Swamphens race through spiky grass.

A wire fence leans, a crazy stavewith sticks for barlines, wind for song.

Over use, interweaving lightwith air and substance, ride the gulls.

Words in our undemanding speechhover and blend with things observed.

Syllables flow in the tide's pulse.

My earliest memory turns in air:

Eclipse.

Cocks crow, as if at sunset;

Grandmother, holding a smoked glass,says to me, 'Look.

Remember this.'Over the goldbrown sand my childrenrun in the wind.

The sky's immensewith spring's new radiance.

Far from here,lying close to the final darkness,a great-grandmother lives and suffers,still praising life: another morningon earth, cockcrow and changing light.

Over the skeleton of thoughtmind builds a skin of human texture.

The eye's [art of another eyethat guides it through the maze of light.

A line becomes a firm horizon.

All's as it was in the beginning.

Obscuring symbols melt away.'Remember this.' I will remember this quiet in which the questioning mindallows reality to enterits gateway as a friend, unchallenged,to rest as a friend may, without speaking;light falling like a benedictionon moments that renew the world.

This version taken from 'The Penguin Book of Australian Verse' Edited with an introduction by Harry Heseltine.

Thanks to Maybe Oneday, one of our readers.