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VOL DE NUIT

sudden silences, different paths,
forsaken friendships of the past,
parallel lines intersecting
for a while,
feeding lies , faking words
faking smiles
abrupt endings
night flight to tangential lives
as we live so we die
alone
no one left to cry

Hard gray and frozen day
Hunkered down in a dunescape drear
Tight lipped and knee hugging cold
Back to the offshore wind

No gull no footprint seen
As stiffly rising to face an angry surf
Begins an aimless solitary wander
Amid the scattered shells

Tide pool ripples to and fro
Bending reflections past and present
As low rustling sea oat whispers
Soft bring quiet musings

Hard clouds on sand on sea
Be hung in forlorn dismal aspect
Casting the chill sullen vista of
A lover’s eyes gone cold

       Raining all morning

sodden tent canvas sagging

     dreaming of elsewhere

Cuttlefish fish cloud and
stucco stipple sky

Baked yellow grass
white hot land the colour of beach pebble eye

A sun painting engorged with eels
seems ageless, and appeals

To our sense of indigenous conscience
but painted in the last decade

When atrocities had burnt through
already, and run to hills dry

Where wide flat paddocks filled
with fattened sheep, looking down

On the middens of the dead
from their hillside retreat