Poem: Star Fish

Star Fish

The tide’s at the turn,

the day settled

on its haunches.

A remote coast

secluded, burnt.

A blackened sentry,

a sometime place

where abalone clings

to dark rocks

and pelicans own the broad

pristine sweep of estuarine waters.

The ocean, relentless,

assaults naked beaches.

and the last light

fingers ancient markings

on a shadowy landfall.

Middens lie undisturbed,

beneath wind-shaped banksias.

Crouching, shell in hand

a man imagines his beard

damp with the juice

of salty oysters.

Sees a long-ago man

tossing aside the shell.

Sees that long-ago crouching man,

the sea caressing the shore below.

Braced against weathered rock

or prone with elbows and hip

in clean sand, his long-ago tribe

fossicking the shallows below.

The now-man, the watcher,

solitary as a lone sea eagle

quartering the shoreline,

sees waves surge onwards

to beach on Bastion Point.

His footprints on clean sand,

proof of life, and a rock pool

with star fish of rare beauty,

awaiting the tide at the turn.

Leila Helen Meredith is a retired newspaper journalist living in a hill-forest region of south-eastern Queensland. She worked for 40 years as both a journalist and editor on major national Australian newspapers, and online news services. An Old Scholar of Brisbane’s historic St. Margaret’s Anglican Girls’ School, she has always written poetry and short stories, but only now “can find time to give them an airing”.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.