Poems
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Memoir of water
By Esther OttawayFrom toddlerhood: a memory of careful bending
and plashing my baby hand in the Huon’s edge.
My childhood learning held in a saltwater brain;
my solitary mother walking her babies by the river. -
There is Nothing Heavier Than a River
By Georgina ReidIt’s the water that pins
us down.
Our flighty atoms,
our fizzy ideas, -
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Homecoming
By Peter MitchellWas it the rainy moon? A longing for reanimation?
Or a reminder to us of the sound we had lost? Forgotten?
Two weeks before for a week, the vault above had warned us.
During those days, an oyster sky for an hour here, there spoke -
Avicennia marina
By Georgina ReidSoft chimneys shoot
skyward through mud
breathing in never out.
Pneumatophores, they’re called -
From Initiation to Ideation
By Luke DaviesBonfire as initiation. Nothing, not even
meaning, was ever not metaphor. Try
as I might I could not experience the slow
degranulation of sandstone into sand -
When Dolphins Bring Gifts
By Anna JacobsonThese creatures sense changes
in currents ~ during the pandemic,
dolphins bring gifts ~ sea-treasures
to lure disappearing humans back ~ -
The Act of Water
By Duy Quang Mai& we thought american, european atlantic
is the best option
– in each litre of sea salt, there
are foreign dreams -
Calling it by another name - Easter Sunday, 8am
By Jenny PollakHow cool the sea looks
all those blue miles to itself
the sun on the estuary. -
Satellite view downwards
By Raynen Bajette O'Keefebread under ocean
scarfs under ocean
prams under ocean
spatula under ocean -
Pellucid dreaming
By Anne CaseyI
To be as complete as the greater part of your self
composed -
PYROCENE TRIPTYCH
By Luke DaviesI: MAHOUT, YELLING
Waking up to still the wind was basic
narcissism and yet the same might be said -
cell safety
By Claire Albrechtwhen you rub your eyes
deep with long fingernails
you feel the push and pull
of the rubbing tides -
Barrier Reef
By JV Birch(formerly Great)
The map is neatly new. The paper, parchment. An artist’s impression. Picture book perfect. Not to be used as a navigational aid. I travel the length of Queensland in seconds. Swathes of thick green meet powder blue. A ribbon of colour ghosts its edge with bursts of pink and yellow, orange and purple. Coral before the climate effec… -
answer
By Eunice Andradaduring the crescendo of the blaze
the sky is a memory of water
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Low Tide in the Mangroves
By Georgina ReidWhen the tide has slipped
to the other side,
when the water’s succumbed
to songs of distant sand, -
Birrarung Billabong
By Tony BirchSitting with your open coffin thinking and not thinking I want to be with the world and you. I knock against the grain of wood and want to know if you remember the day we took the bikes to the river and rode along the bank against a current willing us home to safety. At the billabong we circled sacred water, threw away our shoes and socks and spla… -
We are the Stars and the Sea
By Paris Lay-YeeThey tell us we’re made of bones and skin.
Of cells and blood and genes.
But what they mean to say is -
what school never taught me
By Shona Hawkeshow long it takes to heal a barren riverbank
how to keep the faith that the water birds will return
how to train your eyes to see a flash of platypus
hoarding is a crime, not a conquest
