Inverloch

 

At night we'd hear the roaring seas

From the back room of the house

And wondered how safe we'd be from a tsunami

 

In the morning we'd eat breakfast at the bench

And wander out across the street

Scramble through the dunes, and the hardy foliage

 

Jump brackish ponds with sandbanks

And I'd watch the surfers with a kind of tempered awe

That they could be so far from the shore

 

But I was almost drowned once and couldn't step past my ankles

And the curiosity of rockpools never found me

I remained not at all curious to meet a blue-ringed octopus

 

or cone snail. I kept an unhealthy distance

Someone told me they could sting across a metre or two

Ever vigilant, I knew my best hope would be to outrun the sting

 

And, of course, to keep my hands out of the rockpools

And we'd return home, and I'd shower,

And the water smelled the way it tasted

 

And I'd play, running on the deck,

I fell and speared my knee with wood,

And it only bled a little but it became infected and I picked it and the scar is still visible

 

And we'd drive home,

but when we stopped in Leongatha for the lolly shop

I'd forget my fears for a while.

​

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