Breakwater
We borrowed your broke friend’s
part-broken bike and rode out to trace
the island’s shape. Later, where the beach scraped
in we stopped and ate. Each foreshortened day
left us less and less to say. I chapped the sand
in tennis shoes while you walked the sea wall.
It seemed then that the waveless water
had no tide to obey and the sun stayed
pale and small. Grey crabs cadged scraps
and carried them down. Everything else
remained in place. You went out past
the path’s edge: down the riprap
to dangle a hand in bland surf. No fish
or fishermen. I watched you
all the way to the end.
part-broken bike and rode out to trace
the island’s shape. Later, where the beach scraped
in we stopped and ate. Each foreshortened day
left us less and less to say. I chapped the sand
in tennis shoes while you walked the sea wall.
It seemed then that the waveless water
had no tide to obey and the sun stayed
pale and small. Grey crabs cadged scraps
and carried them down. Everything else
remained in place. You went out past
the path’s edge: down the riprap
to dangle a hand in bland surf. No fish
or fishermen. I watched you
all the way to the end.
Ella Jeffery’s debut book of poems, Dead Bolt, won the Anne Elder Award and the Puncher & Wattmann Prize for a First Book of Poems, and was shortlisted for the Dame Mary Gilmore Award. Her poetry has appeared widely in journals and anthologies including Best Australian Poems, Meanjin, HEAT, Griffith Review, Island and Southerly and she is the recipient of a Queensland Writers Fellowship, a Red Room Poetry Fellowship and the Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award.