The salty sea understands
Vast unbounded loneliness
Despite surrounded by
Bountiful land
Fringed with company
Immersed in memories
Exuding calmest thought
Her placid shores
Lap at my feet
Spurring me on

The salty sea understands
Vast unbounded loneliness
Despite surrounded by
Bountiful land
Fringed with company
Immersed in memories
Exuding calmest thought
Her placid shores
Lap at my feet
Spurring me on

How do I tell her?
Devotion rises
Tide to chin
Sea grass waves
Goodbye
How to live a dream?
Kitchen window spying
Blue gum branches
Conjures fantasies
Surprises
How to love oneself?
Believe there is more
Waiting somewhere
Far away unknown
Renowned
How to make sense?
Words splayed daily
Confusion sets in
Love on the spectrum
Beginnings

Some like sky
Affect ever changing
Fleeting clouds as moments
Intentions dissipate
Others are moonshaped
Soothsayers drawing in
Ocean whim of attraction
Bold orb to winsome sliver
While those most like
Giants of the forest
Branches give shade to
Vulnerable young creatures
Might shed leaves to reinvigorate canopy
A season long hopeful wait
Of beauty immeasurable
While one of deeply held belief
Molten desire tense decades
Ashen interest rises
Eruption surprises
Constant fault lines rift
Ocean islands drift
Gentle seasons in the South
Etched in my memory forever

What say you?
Shall we dance at noon?
Sit amidst the Silvereye's
Playground of golden limbs
Crumbs picked off tables
Sparring with families
Wrens and yellow-throated
Honeyeaters, whose plumage
Blends beautifully
In the dappled grove
Of Autumn
Telling tall stories
Interspersed with gluttonous
Bursts of jam packed lips
Licked clean with cream
Tales of loves lost and found
A local muse renown
As fallen leaves we pine
For far away spring
Fawning

Need not be a bad thing
Laying eyes upon the world
Though one absent
Arousing beauty within
A momentary glimpse
An hour, a day
What of it?
It plays over
Again endless
Pictures of you
Parade through chaos
Marching bands
Entwining hands
Only mine at twilight

Shimmering surface
Barely warmed by
Autumn dawn
Cold depths hold
Mysteries unknown

Do not try,
Pipes chorus -
To compete,
It’s not a game,
Chides a waiter -
With the apple
Of her eye.
Devotion decades deep
While you are merely
A drop in her sea.
Constant, awash
A reed among kelp forest
Slowly disappearing
Taste of salt tears
Sweat of remembrance
Incomparable to the love
She plucked from tender
Young tree

Maybe one day
Clear as a bell
Sound barrier
Dissolves
Maybe next week
Sweet like a peach
Sore words
Repealed
Maybe next month
Bright as a button
Story house
Reveals
Maybe next year
Poignant is the date
Self-love
Heals

Behind soft closed eyes
Resigned
Lights out
Play the reel again
Click switch
Tick of film
Coursing through
Ferris wheel of time
Bulb warms soft
Against the greyness
Dust smokes away
Again
In the park
Walking along chatting
With a friend
Observing absences
Post pandemic life
Look up
She materialises -
Wishes surprise
Creases in face
melt away
Helium smiles
lift the sky
Her eyes dart
Concerned for friend
I say nothing
Pretend
But quip on the cans
In their hand
Flashback to teen girl
Sitting on the Datto
With treasured women
The pictures she used to send melt my heart over again
Jealous I am
She laughs and introduces
The dog but not friend
An afterthought
Living happily ever after
Cranial incantations
I do not write
But summons memories
To illuminate life, again

Desire as the heat emanating
From the gas stove lit - extinguished
Once realised
One can build a fire - with what?
Outside these walls' shapely diameter
Of forest elders
Glacial remains confound me
Monuments to time gone by
Tears of loss and such colder
Forming peaks and troughs
Boulders of thought crushed
Weight of centuries soft snowfall
To walk together amongst it
Not for faint hearted
Tenacity, grit resilience
Packed duvet downy feathers
Love is love is all
