Beyond Punta Playa

the loss of home
is a fading reflection in rivers
like a percepton of glass
shattered by anchors from the sun.
the depth of love is a dance of shadows
and clouds passing under your feet
like the silent folk
across all estuaries of thought.
The place my spirit flees
into white birds at daybreak
making and unmaking the sea
as the furnace of all desire.
The wakes of nightfall
hound the spirit-flower
and my wounds, like passing trees,
throb to the seeding of long beaches.
The homeward path unwinds
from spools of infant dawn
like visions of blasted huts
in barnacles and the powdered rasp of shells.
The passage overhead of red birds
opening the eyes of a third day
suggests the casting of thought in stones
or nets to rake the glass from river floors.
Words and their shadows in the sun
paint perceptions of another home.

from Interiors (Dangaroo Press. 1989), Mark McWatt 1989, used by permission of the author

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