My second island

Translating sea-things to my earth-tuned ears…
 - Val Vallis: 'Michael' -


In a coastal crescent on the island's lee
the homestead stood, verandas shaded
by tin awnings broader than akubra brims,
silver grain of decking anchored
by the trophies of king tides -
chunks of coral, bailer shells,
emerald buoys from fishing-nets.

Through the telescope trained on the channel
vessels hove in view - the little launch
from Heron bound for Gladstone
and the week's supplies, ore-carriers
with foreign flags, squat tubs by day,
transformed by darkness, gliding past
as if on oil, mysterious with coloured lights,
guided by the pilot beacon,
high and planetary-bright.


...All night through my open door
the sea would hum and drone and roar;
by day I'd comb the beach for treasure -
just one buoy or bailer shell -
rewarded best in squally weather
when the waves boiled up from hell.

In a hidden clearing at the island's core
the brolgas danced. Camouflaged in ti-tree scrub,
my friend and I would watch in awe
the regal choreography, the ritual romance...


The east coast, pulverised by ocean,
edged with sand as clean as salt,
hived middens, culinary graves
of people who had loved their place
millennia before it changed its name,
became a grazing lease, liberally
littered with the bones of sheep.

On the island's eastern tip, poised
on the projecting lip above the rocks
where flotsam snarled with driftwood
eddying in froth, skin electrified by ions
glancing off the rainbow spray,
whose shadow did I displace -
what singer, hunter, fisherman?

Who gazed seaward from that spot
in wonder, troubling clairvoyance,
waiting for the hour of the albatross -
the advent of the seafarers whose ships
had wings like giant birds, when strangers
would be welcomed on that shore,
and paradise be lost...
 

*


*Facing Island, opposite the port of Gladstone,
Central Queensland, Australia, lies slightly
north of Heron Island, which is at the southerly
extremity of the chain of reefs, atolls and
islands that are collectively known as
the Great Barrier Reef.