Four poems

Sam Morley

Kelp 

Unravelling on the beach 
hides darkening in the sun 
are the bodies of a forest  
whose foliage once slipped in 
spokes of underwater light. 

In the water’s sunspill they flared  
braids straddled over the seabed 
one pulse above a barren floor – 
a surging lung, the shifting mane 
of a far-flung shelf of life.  

Then one day it all unhitched. 
The sea loosened its wide belts 
tossing cut cloth ashore 
and when it cast out love it was  
with entrails open, crisping at our feet.  

— —

Green 

You asked if I was tired from the long day 
where we walked from one river mouth 
to another along a wind clapped coast. 

By 5.30 your eyes were closed and each breath 
deepened into the next, one, then another  
meeting the low murmur of the sea. 

When evening flanked the caravan 
hidden in our beachside scrub 
you slept as everything around got greener. 

The angled branches darkened  
grass thickened its soft crush hands    
humpedbacked trees crowded the ground. 

Every bit of shrub grew muscular 
pressing down starlings flying home  
under the ebbing arms of tea tree. 

I hoped that you would see all this 
perhaps take it as some sign  
for the child growing within you. 

But you just turned over 
curving away from the onshore winds 
making a private bay from the cold. 

— —

Estuary  

Seagulls escort pelicans to sea 
emissaries sent out above the river mouth 
to embark an armada of sails. 

Further out, waves fold over themselves 
a threadbare link between the crinkle 
of black ocean and sky. 

The breakers chomp at children  
who skittle on sand that atomises 
into a thousand light weight lips. 

We wonder how hard it is to know  
where things join, where salt in the sea  
becomes tannin in the stream 

while in the eddy of our embrace we walk  
slowly, noting the effervescence at our feet 
and the loose lines we’ve left behind.  

— —

Water song 

Take the silver rib that glistens 
Take the wavering at the shores 
Take the slick around the tongue  
Take the bubbles on the walls 

Take the child scuttled in the tide 
Take the land opening to hail 
Take the sliding silk in showers 
Take the patience of summer rain 

Take the quaver in a river 
Take the moonlight bent at will 
Take the storm finding skin  
Take the stillness when it stills