Shorelines

12 Poems shaped by tide and sea.

Shoreline - looking from Killarney to Port Fairy, Australia

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Water has always found its way into my poems
Sometimes as freshwater creeks and rivers running through the inland country where I live.
Other times it appears at the edge of the continent, where land gives way to tide and horizon.

This is a gathering of twelve of my poems shaped by the sea and the shorelines of my life.

The original posts the poems appeared in are linked to each poem title below.

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The Temples Are Inland

I have been away from myself,
stolen by future-makers and dream-traders,
who sailed storm-dark oceans
and left my memories wrecked
on this distant shore.

Far from you—
standing in your hallway,
cigarette in hand,
drifting smoke rings around my head
like brushstrokes on a lover’s soul.

You spoke of tension—
the pull between things,
how it shaped the world,
how it led you to paint the shorelines
of our love.

Now we are washed up there together,
somewhere south of Cape Howe,
where whale bones and driftwood
are all we have
to build shelter for our restless hearts.

I told you of the wave
that washed over me—
how I cried and cried.
No one was to blame.
There is as much weight to the world
as there is sorrow in my heart.

Yes, I have been away from you,
sailing stormy seas,
past volcanoes and forgotten pirate towns.
Those bright city promises—
are lost in the distance,
a lighthouse longing for a reason to be.

"The temples are inland," you say,
taking my hand.
We walk alone, together,
leading each other forward,
searching for the old gods’ treasure.

The map is in your eyes—
which is why I have always looked so hard,
in those moments of starlight
before the dawn
of our dark, sad days.

It has been a long night, hasn’t it?
But there will be sunlight—
on the foothills of our morning,
beyond the sand dunes of our love.
The temples will shine
in their own mystery.

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Love Trips You Up

Love trips you up—
it unties your shoelace,
unbuttons your heart.
It is the country mapped
in the lines of your face,
a face too close to know,
too far away to touch.

Love drifts like a ship,
lost between you and me,
as invisible as a shadow
and as defeated as a sunset.

Its sails hold the sound of the universe,
carrying the truths
we are never ready to hear—
the winds of change, 
what we cannot hold.

Love is a beach 
too soft for our footprints
as we search shorelines
for each other 
from sea to sea. 

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The Umbrella Of Kindness

There is a road
that winds beside a beach,
leading you to a place
past a shipwreck,
where your mother taught you to fly a kite
and told you,
"Don’t let the string go."

She sat on a blanket of rainbows,
under an umbrella of kindness,
in the sun,
out of the wind—
a wind that lifted you,
carried you toward the firmament.
But still,
you held the string,
until you floated above the ocean.

Her voice reached you,
soft and steady,
"It’s safe to fall into the deep."
And so, you dived—
among the dark shapes below,
who lifted you gently,
rising with you to the surface.

You swam toward the shore,
the dark shapes revealing themselves
as shadows of angels.
And there,
on the sand,
her umbrella of kindness waited—
shining in the sun,
shielding you from the wind,
guiding you home.

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Liquid Architecture

Your heart is a coral reef
bow-scraped and bleached.
A million species of love
living in fierce transition
on the cyclops tide—
of one-eyed humanity
learning to listen now,
on its new island.

Your heart rests in the shallows,
its water warmed
by the eternal brainstorm—
progress redefined
by old symbiosis.

Your imaginations swim
to uncharted parts,
your wild words sing,
and your organism
hosts the algae and polyps,
liquid architecture
tumbling still in tomorrow's waves,
riding deeper currents,
waiting to teach again
with your colours
and the coral compute.

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Cactus Beach

A day and a night driving
west against the wind
to the edge of the Nullarbor.
Tim talks of adventures
in the four o'clock morning glow
of his dashboard lights,
his square-jawed confidence,
the easy love of waves—
always on the edge of things.

He drives
with the reckless downhill attitude
of his father's royal Irish abandon,
a spirit that would have led men
out of trenches.

They make the campground at Cactus Beach
Tim ready as if for a big game, 
his body made for battle.
My brother watches—
brave in quieter ways,
perhaps braver,
because he's never done it.

As a kid, he fell
from the top of a locomotive—
a dark death machine trapped in a playground.
There were minutes of silence,
but the sun woke him.

Now he's pulled again from his narrow world.
There are rumours of a great shark,
black and blue
at Cemetery Bay.

Jason slides on his old wetsuit—
seal-black and shiny in the sun.
He's a smiling dare.
Tim approves,
waxing his board
as if for the last time.

They paddle out,
drawn to the famous break
that looms, falls, then looms again—
curved giants,
their edges carving the cliffs.

Tim takes him to where 
five men sit on their boards—
bayonets of reckoning
their silence nodding
at the deep.

My brother imagines demons:
jagged teeth rising
a steam train of thoughts 
wanting to snuff him out—
or shake him awake.

A rising wave appears.
Tim turns to take it,
arms pushing, searching for speed.
Life, slow and beastly,
chases him now.
Water slaps his back—
machine-gun kisses,
makes him valiant, silent,
but never still.

The hulk gathers him,
too big but he rises—
limbs all working,
gliding down the front,
a moment that breathes forever.

My brother waits,
still,
wondering
where life begins
and ends. 

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Between Worlds

I jump
between worlds,
looking for broken glass,
crushed lanterns green,
an old anchor—
wedged, doomed,
dragged, unwound.

I long
to go home,
to where it's calm.
Gravity,
once slow and patient,
guided lava toward
new beginnings—
a million years in the making.

Wave-sculpted,
kelp-washed,
urchin salt,
anemone and rock lobster
deep away—
from hands, and octopus.

The raft of my thoughts,
built for the next wave.
Every rock under my feet
connected underneath—
reef-stricken,
forgotten but not lost.

Timber scraped together,
Soulbird, wrecked and delicate,
waiting for your volcanic hands.

Your warm embrace—
lift me
off this last beach
of my existence,
waiting for your kiss,
your breath to breathe
life into me.

Others' emotions—
my only map.

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Fairy Prion

In my hand,
dead and delicate,
I want its beautiful life
to return—
from the far-off waves,
from the deep, close ocean,
where it belonged.

Shadows of flight
linger in its feathers,
its journey ended
on this shore.

Torn nets
lie buried in the sand,
broken and tangled,
longing to pull again
beneath moonlit waters
of the dark bay,
its basalt boulders
silent witnesses
to the cost of wonder.

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Stormbound

They sleep under the upturned dinghy,
weatherbeaten long before the storm
that looms from the west.
The dog lies between the fishermen,
warm beneath two grey wool blankets—
kept for moments when earth and water
lose their balance,
and chaos begins its dance.

A far-off rumble
shivers the dog,
as if an ancient volcano,
long extinct,
is waking to spill
across Jurassic swamps—
making rock again.

The first rain taps,
small and almost gentle,
on the boards above them,
barely heard
over the waves out on the reef.

No words are spoken.
The dog keeps them warm,
a quiet warmth alive
in the night's chill.
Unheard sounds thrum through its body,
a low vibration they feel
but cannot name.

They've left their pipes,
their gnarled hands idle,
waiting for the dark and stillness
to shift.
Weathered men now,
these men of nets and silence,
who lift King George whiting and mullet
from the shallows—
ungilling, shaking seaweed loose,
passing knives wordlessly
in the boat, steady handed
in the basalt-bounded bay
where kelp forests rebel
against colonial safety.

The cold wind rolls
around the dinghy’s curved ends.
Lightning hides behind the hummocks.
Inland, eel-full creeks
thank the storm as it moves past.
The rain doesn't linger here long.
Like the dog,
the men sleep in peace.

Morning brings forty fish,
the basket full.
The old dog watches
the quiet ritual,
wondering
what it is all about.

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Night Fishing at Killarney

A lone lantern flickering on the beach—
a borrowed light
against the sea's dark.

The last of the fishermen,
ghostly figures with cane poles,
wicker baskets heavy with promise,
wind and whiskey on their breath.

For once, the wind behind them,
they stand like sentinels
on the low boulder reach.

They move little,
their cigarettes spiraling embers
into the salt-black air,
until a rod bends sudden and deep—
then they're young again,
running for the first time in a century,
to set the hook and bring in
that shining thing,
flinging itself at the moon,
fighting back toward the waves.

After midnight, they haul the weight
of their catch
across sand dunes lost to time,
their shadows like dark masts
waving through the tussocks,
memories lost too quickly.

High beams sweep homeward—
to garages stark with grease and flourescent light
where red motors crouch
beside Golden Fleece bottles,
and grey overalls wait,
clean folded,
for Monday’s return.

But for now, they plan
another night at Killarney,
their minds on the mulloway,
their beach-wrecked grandfathers
whispering through the wind.

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Strange Sea

There is no need to go out very far
in that strange sea—
where seals, for the first time in years,
have taken over the bay.
They are swimming everywhere,
chasing after schools
of silver fish that leap
in sideways flights,
giving their place away.
Where there are sardines and salmon,
there are terns too—
keeping an urgent rhythm,
making the most of their moment
when everything is together.
They show us where we should be
as we leave the river,
outboard singing softly—
then louder again
as we ride the swells
above the kelp beds,
where we will fish
for the wrong fish.
Because we’ve just driven
the narrow road
through rolling hills,
past service stations of regret,
and through those sad stories
when early morning radio hosts
take the calls
from lonely lovers of yesterday—
who have never been fishing,
or driven a car fast in the night
to the shorelines of their lives,
away from that 3 a.m. feeling
that their tide is running out
on the radio of their lives
in the depths of their rooms.
I carry their stories with me—
from the middle of my childhood,
from the bay, in our boat,
with my father
like a lighthouse
on my distant shore,
ready to rescue me
from my daydream,
beckoning me
towards middle-age—
when my poems
will be beams
that wake the late-night listeners
who sit in their darkness,
while I sit in a boat
swinging on its anchor—
the tide of my life
changing me.
For if I look down,
like they do,
I know I’ll see a dark shape
go under me too—
some strange monster,
or just a shark,
or an orca,
where it belongs—
chasing those daring seals
in our strange sea.

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Halfway to Tomorrow

In the story he told me,
my father spoke of a friend
who dragged his dive float
in through the deep,
in through the shallows—
blood trailing behind
a wheeling kingfish's head,
shark-bitten out in the blue.
"It towed me backward, 
halfway to tomorrow,
until its teeth released me."

My father would smile,
remembering spearfishing—
the sun on his back,
the cold wind changing.

The same cold wind blows
on me, ten years after,
long after the speargun's hung up.
He teaches me to swim
in a protected bay,
Shows me the snorkel blow,
talks of whale spray
as I fall forward
into a blue channel.

Deeper water welcomes me.
In silence my thoughts settle,
swept away with kicked-up sand,
sparkling like flecks of gold
in shafts of sun,
while garfish dance in the distance.

Another ten years pass.
My father—seal-like—
flaps through kelp and crevice,
calm amazement shining
from his silver, seaweed face.

I don't swim the long way
along the bouldered edge.
I swim through the surf swell,
murky clouds hiding
imagined creatures below,
sensed in my bottomless life—
where my goggles, half in, half out, 
break two worlds:
the real and the dreamed.

For minutes I'm held
between life and death
until I find him again
in the lee of the shoal,
where whale boats once towed
ruined right whales ashore 
to a blood-soaked beach.

The land has taken us too.
We've become upright creatures—
rigid, aching, grey-haired
like bones on the sand.
The straight lines of verandas,
the backyards of neglect
have stolen us
from our search for hidden holes
where ruby crayfish 
still hide forever out of reach.

Now we don't swim.
We walk the western shore—
together, but apart.
My father searches the heath
for the rare bird of forever,
the one his younger self buried.

I can still climb the slippery rocks
to the headland,
where I find myself
watching right whales return—
their black backs breaking through,
teaching me again
to have faith
in what I cannot see.

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The Energy of Everything

Love will find you
it will surprise you again,
like a wave lifting you,
up off your feet,
as you walk in from a swim
in the energy of everything.

Daring voices will beckon you
as you hide in a garden
among brilliant green jewels
and statues of goddesses
who stand fast in the energy of everything.

They call you to the gate
where the city's hum flows in,
like the world is a factory
crafting serendipity for you,
shaping destiny
from the energy of everything.

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