Lightning Crashes

Whenever I long to call home

I beach comb for a telephone. 

Crabs recoil and take cover 

wet sand shifts, shadows pass.

I look for an artifact calcified 

that calls to mind 

human hands and ears. 

This spider murex has knuckled fingers. 

Past the ridged contours of its shell 

a cavern deep, pink of echos. 

Its little horns indent my palm.

As the portal presses to my ear

the shell suctions against skin.

First, the whirr of wrens -

a wing beats against still water 

breaks it like a mirror cracks

dirty gold dappled sun 

warms the silk of my ear. 

A thunder of brumbies’ hooves across plains

stamp out the doldrums of my longing 

 - or is it thunder here? 

Sodden clouds amass and group overhead. 

I wait for you to come to the phone. 

You are likely at your love’s labour 

desiccated weathered outboards 

Eternally toiling and tinkering 

Readying the boat to return to the water. 

Tiny splinters of grey-green lichen

reach into the headpiece

tickling the hairs of my ears. 

I laugh - 

on the other end, a spanner drops. 

Blooms like sunset fireworks shower down

as he storms through rows of ironbarks. 

Hares hop through junkyard rust. 

The cranking of a bloated engine -

the motorbike is deafening 

descending down to the waterhole. 

His hurried wiping of hands. 

He picks up.

Pressure releases.

The murex falls back to the windswept sea.

I touch my ear - grease smears my fingers. 

The sting of two-stroke singes my nose. 

Lightning crashes.