10 Best Famous Unresolved Poems

Mollymook

 All week, in this rented house, 
 sea spray and whispers of wind 
 weave through the eucalypts, 
 like a Sondheim melody.
 Through the pewter leaves
 the sea glimpsed from the wooden deck 
 is, at times, teal silk. 
 Other days it is grey.

 Longing stirs like waves 
 about to break on the shore
 and sometimes they lift 
 and swell like hope,
 as they pound the sand.
 From this wooden deck 
 far above the beach, the sand 
 has lost its power to cling and
 irritate like problems unresolved.


 Other times the waves rise and crest, 
 only to evaporate, 
 the way dreams do upon waking.
 But I know, when I go home,
 the sequin of sea spray will linger 
 on my eyelids, sleek 
 and beguiling as a promise.



© November 2002 Dale Harcombe 
First published in ‘My cat cannot have friends in Australia,’ the anthology of the 2004 Wollongong poetry workshop.