Tag: Poem

The Shell Collector

01/03/2020

Plastic rustles in my grip.

I smell salt breezes:

One million shells to collect.

I’m ready for conches, scallops,

Fingernails and cones,

Abalone rainbows and

Shells in delicate pink.

 

The first into my bag:

Fifteen butts of cigarettes,

Littered on the grass

Where my baby sister played

And picked them up.

 

The next:

A bottle, ready for breaking

Shattering through sand

That soft skin will tread

Ready to be rounded

(eventually)

Into prettier pieces.

 

And then:

A release of balloons

Flat and floppy

Coloured like jelly,

A terminal

Turtle’s banquet.

 

I don’t leave the beach

With shells

But I leave it with sand

Clean as conscience.

Ashflakes

05/02/2020

 

My sister dances and twirls

Burnt leaf from the 2020 Australian bushfires, Sapphire Coast NSW

like a burnt leaf in the wind,

crackling with laughter.

She snatches and catches

at strange black objects

stark against mandarin skies.

 

A sieve of ash

like icing sugar topping a cake

sprinkles our shoulders

and I can’t help but think:

it’s a forest falling upon us

and everything in it turned to dust.

 

As Mum packs boxes in the car

(a Tetris game with photos, laptops, pyjamas, toys)

I unpack new boxes of fear:

things that never frightened me before,

like a whisking west wind

and a warm summer’s day.

 

As I pick pieces of fern

from frizzled hair

my sister starts spluttering.

I run to pat her back.

‘It’s like catching snowflakes,’ she says.

‘But you shouldn’t use your tongue.’