deep end

deep end
to ‘Auntie’ Wanda Kiel-Rapana

out Tolaga Bay way
my auntie’s hearth
and homestead earth
there’s a wharf you
can walk out beyond
the breakers, a wharf
to take you over the
line where the tide
changes colour as the
sea deepens and the
swell lengthens,
a wharf you might
think is a fiddle of
the lens, the short
warped marvellously
long, a mirage like
a headland that breaks
off into the shine of day
and dallies above the ocean,
yet it’s real enough, you
could picnic out there
above the waves that
glide in like gulls
coming in to land
a wharf like any other
running out however long
leaving you nowhere else
to go except back over
the sea-scoured cement
or off the deep end into
the dark strained with
sun and the cold of its rays
down above the fluttered
sea bed, the wind out
Tolaga Bay way lifting
the dandelion web
of a reaped soul
into the dawning hearth
and homestead light.

april 2017