It lay on the sand,
its bronze scales wearing
a soft shroud of moonlight,
a gaping mouth no longer
flushed by water but by
the thin poison of pure air.
I reached down and ran
my fingers along the translucent
mucus covering its body and felt
the deep tremble of a life
still fighting to free itself,
the muscles and taut
sinews now stripped of strength
could only harden beneath
the touch of my hand.
It no longer moved but gave
an occasional soundless gasp.
I wondered what horrors
were flashing or fading
in the recesses of its brain,
what it was feeling
in those moments
before dying.
Its upward eye was locked
in a frozen stare, a black pupil
opening to a hole
that plummeted beyond
earthly depth.
It seemed to hold me locked
within an orbit that had
opened around the gravity
an inpouring dark.
Fifty years on I feel
the draw of its stare,
the pull of the unknowable
centered deep within
its eye, still slowly winding
me in, only now
I am so much closer
to its rim.
Memory still walks
along the river
on a summer's evening
when a soft wind
lingers over the mangroves
and lifts the smell of mud
rimmed along the river's edge
into the warm air.
I imagine mulloway
prowling the deep channels
dug out by the tides,
the shiny backs of dolphins
arching through the dark,
sewing together
the torn dreams
of old men.
I can feel the thick flow
of its history and cough
the accumulations
of a century's waste.
From Birkenhead Bridge
I look out over the river's
wide reach, its distances
and into the vanishing point
of a waiting silence.
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