'Oyster Cove variations'

"...Trying / to explain my visit to these ruins / the simple pretexts vanish like cinders...” 
–Jamie Grant 

“…Parting the milky haze / On mudflats, seabirds…”

–Gwen Harwood

i.

birdswarm at water, at

eye's reach, under-

stated flow-

ers : under-

foot, wet hill

contours: hill-

trudged bracken-

patterns in light

declining, & wild

blackberries editing

scribbles & holes

in the taste

of the present : past

the autumn

timing you stored,

traced, as passed

for, all : in, fallen, as

apples, as:

the date enacts

a stagger, a slipped

instant, mis-

printed on crumpled air :

as : gather-

ing in the picture

of a hill, a smoke

cloud, a lake,

a flower : a roar

of unspecified

dots at the lowline: