BEACH WALK

A long beating heat, enveloping all,
the long days of a summer without end,
scorching backs, shoulders squared between,
creating energy, interest unflagging.

The walk, endlessly summer’s, by the
long rows of neat fibro houses
beside the bay of half topped boats,
swinging to a chop of blue-green water.

Under the railway, up by the station
across the well-browned grass, all bindi-eye,
asphalt far too hot for naked feet,
then blue, the whitewater, endless sand.

Stretching limitlessly, beyond eyesight
arcing, thinning, reaching the distant point,
sand dunes without limit, edging the sea,
every yellow-white hill an unknown secret.

The hills are thinning now, most all gone,
Forty thousand then, carted off in trucks.
The fibro and bindis gone too; the boats plastic not wood.
No longer the same, that long walk to the beach.



Published in Reunion, XX! World Congress of Poets , Sydney, 2003