We spend a bit of time on the beautiful unspoilt coastline of South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula. This poem sees the canvas of the beach as a story; the sand, seaweed and pebbles as a kind of mysterious vocabulary.




First published in Text
and later in my first full collection micromacro (2006 – out of print)





vocabulary of the beach



this alphabet of pebbles
shells
seaweed
each morning
each tide
a recombinant story

a subtle language
infinite narrative from a
finite vocabulary

telling the old story each day
another way



today an almost
blank page. a feathery weed
brushes a haiku



After the storm a cyrillic of bleached Posidonia

Sumi-e black seagrass on whitepapered sand



Chats leave their own story in cuneiform


everyday
The mystery
explained

the rosetta stone,

undiscovered.