Fortescue Bay, Tasmania
(Nothing comes in the mornings but the headlands grey green bulbous with forest lonely seaweed swa ying on the other side, the ocean is deaf and shouts an answer me if you want the poem alive)
now in a time when men like various gorillas discussing renounced Christ beat chests remember English has rhyme texture et c but reading reading is another matter (stop)
they were speaking of a shoreline the ripped rocks frozen wrinkled skin hairy they swam but turning their boat grating stuck place sucks you up
slap! slap! one cormorant two taking off a rusted (once a ship ground to a halt) skeleton flesh gone where gone past outwards too with those men in their boat. Did you hear me? Nothing to hear to pray for when you’re lost in a tree’s fibres swirling up gaseous eating reading yourself.
For this is the age of circularity they knew nothing but sense the groaning the grat‐ ing the huge sucks slurps of time’s wet tongue icy water claws it is all that can be done.
Stuart Cooke