Memoir of water

From 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.
 
Swimming with friends last summer, our bodies
larger with age, remade into squealing children.
Floating in night’s bay as the fireworks
scribbled joy on a black sky, black rippled waves.
 
The turbid water that followed my baby out.
The tender water I washed my child in.
In my home town, water’s coldness, its finger-thrill. 
My paper-boat poem, rose petals for the dead.
 
How many times water has heard my sorrows.
It never leaves me, willing to take me in.
Give me its power to daily lift through cloud – 
its clean forgetfulness that engenders courage.