A Fiercer Light

Lake Wellington - and Paradise Beach

Lake Wellington Shore

At the wide lake's restless shore
sandy margins fret and spoil -
ragged banks tangled and raw,
mats of dead roots losing soil.

Testimony of trees long drowned,
sculptured wrecks break waves in bay.
Bleached, hollow boles, losing ground,
adorn the edges of decay.

Yet some stubborn shrubs make home,
roots salt-washed, boughs splashed with spray,
flowering white against the foam,
spiky leaves green-fronting grey.

Some steps inland along the way,
water-buttons round a rut,
pig-face* startling pink display
above that warty succulent.

Where a clearing widened lay
broken glass by a fire-blacked ring,
debris of careless revelry -
rags and tins have had their fling.

We met nobody on the track
within this garden wilderness,
marveling out or marching back,
ourselves the only witnesses.

................

*Pig-face and water buttons are flowers.

Paradise Beach

Paradise has no data.
Well, what did you suppose?
Approach past the manuka;
bliss leads you by the nose,
plonks you down on biscuit sand.
'Have a good day!' tiny camper yells;
the sun's in his blue grandstand.

We toddle along the squeaky strand,
our red-gum staves in hand,
clutching treasures of colored shells
and a cuttlebone* so grand -
would be a proud launch for a nautical rat -
turned turtle on its maiden voyage.
Ah, what a rum fate's that.

Under the swash, pipis unseen
bubble their breathing - cold time-stream -
waves rise sandy from a green tureen,
curl and collapse in  theatrical spray.
Watch them a minute or stare half a day -
what is the mind but a fractal mirage
while manuka breezes sweeten the dream?

.................

*Cuttlebone is the stiffening cartilage remnant of a cuttlefish. 

* A pipi is  of a species of bi-valve mollusc.