Jumping Pin
“Jumping Pin”
Sweltering,
a flyspeck of a tinny bobs
like a champagne cork
swallowed by
lemonade waves
in aquamarine glass
froth all around foam cresting
like the manes of spectral
white brumbies running wild -
there, the aluminium,
flimsy like tin foil,
stills silent amidst
the rays of a fierce burning golden orb
and the lilting screams
of spirited seagulls; there,
Our story floats, a classroom of sorts
there, with an ancient teacher
chaperoned by a large school of
small slick pale grey stingrays
nonchalantly dancing lessons in life
an inch or two below the surface crystal sheets
where lessons swim like words written
leading us to the point
where two ends meet
and the larger waits;
diminutive and graceful
the barbs of their tales
pointing like compasses
magnetic we watch
electric tails like rulers
stroke an open board,
they are pale shadows
witnesses through other worldly dimension
rippling wraiths through frosted glass sea green
they are cream bellied and
“soul full” he says,
like they have swallowed
something mystical
something important like
some gold treasure box
full to the brim with
pearls, precious jewels and maps,
here they are arriving just for us
gracefully gliding
silent grey ghosts
minuets in regiments
confederates in a lost
ocean far away
under the bottom
of a flimsy tin vessel
chaperoning us into
deeper waters
far away from
the muddy shore and
skeletal bony fingers
of the rooted mangroves
pungent with fecund primordial life
where somewhere way
past the sandy beach back road
in a busy city stinking bitumen street
Death is waiting in a sterile corridor
somewhere austere and impersonal
where busy nurses shoes
scurry silently, strangers
to those floating by them
out of rooms, through walls
and windows
clocks tick like time bombs
metronomes marking
milestones
But we,
we are far from that
we are escaping
towards
the Pin
I trail my fingers in the ocean
“take care kid” the ancient one says,
“best bring those hands on board”
and he slides a small bucket of bait
towards me over crab pots, messy ropes
a hamper of sandwiches, fresh white bread, butter
and the prawns caught with the crabs and boiled
in a big pot on the beach at Cabbage Tree
earlier that morning
in briny ocean water
the blue-green crustacians
now pretty pink and dead-eyed
salt 'n pepper sprinkled
above concerned brow
concentrating under
a beat up old hat
falling apart at the seams
a couple of tins of
Kirk’s Sarsaparilla
sitting in chipped ice
bought at the bait shop
perched majestically in
a big pale blue foam esky
waiting for a thirsty
buccaneer to plunder
fast, not delicately
the ice, now a small pond
in a small blue box
sliding from side to side
in a lilliputian boat
in an elephantine
byzantine blue ocean, here
in this kingdom
Nimrod casts his line over the side
where, lurking sabre toothed Leviathan’s
their stripes concealed,
follow a nightmare in a child’s mind
looking for signs of triangles
breaking the surface
the bait sits next to it all
slithering slickly
watching, waiting
The wind bites my face
perfunctory plumes of saltwater spray
me, stinging my skin,
I lick my lips, present tensed
now tasting like
Samboy Salt’n’Vinegar chips,
and he says,
“here slap this sunscreen on ya kid,
nothin’ bites harder than the Sun
‘cept a Shark,
there’ll be hell to pay tonight
you come back to Sammell’s Drive
looking like a broiled tomato
skin peeling”
and he throws me a
Sunny Boy from the esky
melting and cold to touch
it is kissed with my parched lips
Orange, syrupy, slushy and sweet to taste
He pierces the end of the hook
with a big fat blood worm
between his index finger and thumb
I follow his lead like the
Sorcerer’s Apprentice
and pierce the wriggler,
like I’m threading silver thread
through the eye of an elf’s needle
then hitting bone
my finger drops
wet fresh scarlet,
instead of howling,
I suck my blood,
the taste of iron
undertone of earth
with ocean buoyant and bottomless
between a flimsy inch or so of nothing
where my bare feet splay,
I soothe and swallow
my small pain,
here is Heaven and
complaints aren’t brave
echoes the Sargent Major
who guards sentry
somewhere back on shore
Here, bravery was being birthed
Here, on a choppy ocean
one year off a decade.
In a hospital ward
far from a pin
facing sharp teethed monsters
she sucks on ice
“radiation burns inside;
it kills everything kid”
that’s what She told me.
When we make it back to shore
he swings his old legs over
the small bow, “saltwater is
good for the arthritis”, he says
and with his bare feet touching the sandy bottom
he pulls the burning aluminium tinny
into the shallows dragging crab pots
in its wake full to the brim with
dark green and blue pinching claws
begging for freedom
The trevally mouths now open
and breathless gills stationary
gaze upwards eyes glazed
and distant watching
something bigger we cannot
see or imagine
a future
without bedtime stories
from a stolen and lost Queen
Luminescent pale aqua jelly fish
wave to us in slow mo
like solitary battalions,
beckon hypnotically,
entrancing me -
here IS magic -
“come back out”,
they seem to
send their soundless
but loud message
to me like a siren call
the tide pulling the sand
under my feet back out to them
Kind of Poe, haunting
remote and complicit
as if they, only they,
know the need in
a child to grow wings
like theirs, to
flee, escape
to cast line
and grasp onto
some kind of
“brave”
I stare back out to
deep horizon
so far away
the call is calling
ever so seductively
the boat has returned
and is moored
gently sighing
in muddy “safe” harbour
“here kid look at this,”
he holds aloft above his head
in the large hands of a builder
it is all but three feet in length
shiny and sleek, a head built
for hammering nails,
he says, “dead baby Hammerhead,
don’t go swimming out deep today
Mama’s out there
big sharp teeth
somewhere on the prowl
searching for a lost baby”
respect for a mother
“yeah grandpa,
bet her Mama’s hurting bad”
He picks up the tiddler
and throws the baby out to
her mama who is frantic
in her silence somewhere
out there with
sharp teeth
hurting bad
somewhere
prowling the deep
“story to tell your mama
when she comes home”
he says, his eyes as watery
as an open Ocean
“take these oysters,
and this knife,
be careful, don’t cut yourself
see if you can find us
a pearl”
I smile,
“I’ll find the best one just for Her”.
(LadyLabyrinth/2019)
agm/ljb/llb/gvlm
“more than all the stars in the sky
more than all the pearls in the sea”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KQTZ1NPNzM
“Cry Baby Cry”/The Unloved
1. Jumpinpin / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumpinpin_Channel
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