Reef dreaming
………. – for Sarah

Leaving the boat
you enter the world of water
naked of knowledge –
schooled only in the use
of snorkel, mask and flipper.
At first, uncertain of the ocean’s depth,
your arms and legs go everywhere;
the sudden terror in your heart
heard in each troubled breath.
A fish swims in front of you. Then another.
And another. The colours brighter than
the brightest colours in your favourite box of paints.
Now your mouth becomes a gill, limbs
a tail and fins. You drift among reef and fish:
a friend, a fellow fish… until the reef appears
like the living thing it is
to crawl out from the shadows and
seek the light it feeds upon.
Now, caught between coral and the source of light,
fish dreaming turns to fear – you feel the reef
slice into your flesh like a knife, gills
filling with water…

Taking your hand
we find a sand bank
to stand upon, and I explain
how the glass in the mask magnifies the view.
‘It changes the look of things’, I say.
‘Like the mind does when it dreams’.
Still holding hands we turn
our backs on the reef
and push off for the shore,
floating like lovers on a canvas by Chagall.

**

He hinted he might consider moving

if she promised an ocean, or, at least, a river view. After not hearing from her, he returned to the story and noted the unhandy cadence of its first sentence. He made a promise to himself to rewrite the opening.

When she read the draft of his story, she sent him a river in an envelope. A week later he received a parcel. When he opened it an ocean flooded his lounge room. After that he never heard from her again, and he never did get around to rewriting the beginning, or, for that matter, finishing the

**

The lawn

“Spring has returned. The earth is like a child that knows poems.”
………………………………………………………– Rainer Maria Rilke

He is mowing the lawn, again.
Again it is unnecessary.
Like pulling grey hairs from
a greying head.
On another warm November evening
I put down the newspaper with
the interminable stories on emissions trading,
the growing number of climate change sceptics,
to watch him do what he does
every other Sunday:
go at it like there’s no tomorrow.

I want him to stop
mowing the parched lawn,
but his body moves with such speed and purpose
that I fear he is afraid
of grass and its slow and chthonic growth.
I want him to take
the lawn clippings collected
(like analects) in the grass catcher,
and spread them at the foot of the tree
leaning into the corner of his garden.
I want to shake him
like the wind shakes his cottage garden
when it blows hot and hard
from the north.
I want him to enter
his house when he has finished
using the edge trimmer
and pick up a dictionary
and look up the word concinnity…
I need him to listen to the earth,
know poems.

 – ‘The lawn’ won the 2010 Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize

 **

Half Moon Bay, Black Rock, Circa 1972

Every hair is numbered like every grain of sand
………………………………………………………– Bob Dylan

The signs were already there
If only we’d bothered to look:
‘No Standing’ on the road,
‘No Boating’ by the sea.
But, desire knows no prophecy
Nor listens to rumours of rain.
Beneath the cliff face storied
With middens, mirror bush
Shimmering with water and moonlight,
We defied the weather and the gods.
I sat you on a blanket
And opened a book by Baudelaire.
I remember you asking what
Fleur de mal meant as I leant forward
And let down the dark tendrils of your hair.

Some thirty years later as I drive
Around Red Bluff I can feel the bay
Bending again to my will, see your face
Flashing past Rickett’s Point
Like a stranger’s on a reel of super 8,
Witness West Gate Bridge deconstructing,
Watch the waves retreating in slow
Motion to the Cerberus, and our love,
Like a breakwater, holding back the ocean.

** 

Singing in chains like the sea
(Portrait of Dylan Thomas)

I begin with you, boily boy, boyhood hero,
Self-acclaimed Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive,
Tomb-rooting, womb-raiding, welshing boyo
Who knew buggerall Welsh, yet grew to give
Your tongue the mother of all hidings with
Bardic, bawdy hwyl and yawp, syntactical high jinks.
Between words it was beers at Brown’s with the wife
Until America inveigled the Poet Inc.
Then you did the rest with a biblical best eighteen whiskey drinks.

---

.
Ray Liversidge is a poet based in southwest Victoria. His latest book is Riverside: New & Selected Work 2003-2025 published by Interactive Publications. His other books are: …of a sudden; Oradour-sur-Glane; no suspicious circumstances: portraits of poets (dead); The Barrier Range; Triptych Poets: Issue One; The Divorce Papers; Obeying the Call. His verse novel The Barrier Range was adapted for stage and performed as Seeking Fabled Waters at the 2010 Melbourne Writers Festival. He is the winner of the 2010 Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize. His poetry has appeared in over 100 journals and anthologies here and in other countries including the US, Canada, UK, Scotland, Ireland and Spain. He can be found at www.poetray.wordpress.com