Poems
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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 -
Coastal
By Brooke ScobieSalt crusted.
Ever lingering
Remnants of my ancestors.
I allowed them to settle and fall away, -
PYROCENE TRIPTYCH
By Luke DaviesI: MAHOUT, YELLING
Waking up to still the wind was basic
narcissism and yet the same might be said -
Submerged
By Jane GibianSlips of fish like smears of transparence:
the lagoon shallow and humming
where paperbark branches scrape -
the poem begins with a breathing reef
By Eunice Andradaa new cemetery blooms in the heat
we search for the last traces of colour -
Unhooking the Lip
By Sean Westfor Courtney Sina Meredith
She cups my name in her hands
like an undersized fish, unhooks -
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… -
How Water Works
By Tony Birchcup a hand
skin and bone
this water well
a beating heart -
Pellucid dreaming
By Anne CaseyI
To be as complete as the greater part of your self
composed -
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 -
Satellite view downwards
By Raynen Bajette O'Keefebread under ocean
scarfs under ocean
prams under ocean
spatula under ocean -
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, -
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 -
Left brain in a bind
By Margaret Owen Ruckert‘A four-year-old in Australia has witnessed on media over 10 deaths by drowning.’
Statistics don’t lie around like sunbathers
but in a healthy respect for the call of water -
cell safety
By Claire Albrechtwhen you rub your eyes
deep with long fingernails
you feel the push and pull
of the rubbing tides -
Above The Twilight Zone
By Sara MorgilloThe surface rises
slowly
Creeps up shoreline, as we beckon it closer behind our backs
Spreads oil floats bags and bottles -
answer
By Eunice Andradaduring the crescendo of the blaze
the sky is a memory of water
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Rainclouds are capricious
By Magdalena BallThis is the last love song, I swear
watching your slow demise
on someone else’s television.
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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.
